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Welcome to Notes from the Labs! Last month, we introduced you to the Find The Cause Research Consortium. This month, we're spotlighting the Sherr Lab at Boston University's School of Public Health. Dr. David Sherr is a molecular biologist, toxicologist, and cancer immunologist who studies cellular receptors that recognize a wide variety of environmental pollutants that signal cells to both grow and metastasize. He is an internationally recognized expert on the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR), a protein that binds to environmental carcinogens and begins the aberrant signaling that results in a full-blown cancer cell. Here is an overview of the lab's work. |
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Spotlight on The Sherr Lab |
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Recent studies suggest that over 70% of all cancers are caused by external factors (i.e., non-inheritable traits) and thereby are potentially preventable. Furthermore, the incidence of several cancers in young people, including breast, prostate, oral cavity, cervical, and colon cancers has been increasing. Why? For over 20 years the Sherr Laboratory has worked towards understanding the biological basis for these striking facts, particularly by focusing on the contribution of the many chemicals that everyone is exposed to daily in starting or exacerbating cancer. The studies are structured around two modes of cancer prevention, primary and secondary:
1) For studies on “primary prevention”, the Sherr Lab collaborates with the Monti Lab to develop high throughput (fast and economical) physical and computational methods to predict the likelihood that any given chemical, among the universe of >86,000 chemicals registered by the EPA, can cause or worsen cancer. The goal here is to get these chemicals off the market and out of our environment. 2) To develop “secondary prevention” strategies, the lab studied the biological mechanisms through which these environmental carcinogens suppress the immune system, the one biological system capable of killing evolving cancers, and drive cancer formation. These studies have identified specific molecular pathways that chemicals use to induce cancer and that could be targeted to intercept cancer before it starts (secondary prevention). In particular, the Sherr lab identified a specific protein receptor that, when interacting with any one of an entire class of environmental carcinogens, both suppresses the immune system and induces normal cells to become aggressive, invasive, and metastatic malignancies. Perhaps most exciting is the development of non-toxic, targeted drugs that block these adverse pathways and have been shown, in the Sherr lab, to at least partially prevent several types of cancers in pre-clinical studies. Furthermore, in collaboration with the Sonenshein, Kuperwasser, and Monti Labs, the Sherr Lab is working towards developing diagnostic tests that indicate early (before cancer) activation of these pathways in patients at risk of developing cancer and thereby pinpointing the appropriate time for pre-cancer interception with non-toxic, targeted drugs or lifestyle modifications. The possibility that we might be able to detect warning signs (molecular changes) and to intervene well before even pre-cancers form drives the lab’s work every single day. |
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