Associate Investigator Center for Regenerative Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital

Associate Investigator Cancer Center, Mass General Research Institute

Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School

Principal Faculty Harvard Stem Cell Institute

3' untranslated regions; cancer quiescence; chemoresistance; micrornas; post-transcriptional regulation; protein synthesis; ribonucleoproteins; ribosomes; rna modifications; rna-binding proteins; stress signaling The Vasudevan laboratoryfocuses on the role of post-transcriptional mechanisms in clinically resistant quiescent cancer cells. Tumors demonstrate heterogeneity, harboring a small subpopulation that switch from rapid proliferation to a specialized, reversibly arrested state of quiescence that decreases their susceptibility to chemotherapy. Quiescent cancer cells resist conventional therapeutics and lead to tumor persistence, resuming cancerous growth upon chemotherapy removal. Our data revealed that post-transcriptional mechanisms are altered, with modification of noncoding RNAs, associated complexes and ribosomes—molecules that control vital genes in cancer—which are important for the persistence of quiescent cancer cells.