Contact: Rob Graham
rob.graham@childrens.harvard.edu
617-919-3110
Children's Hospital Boston

DNA Packaging Provides a Target for Leukemia

Caption: Giving chromosomes their structure and shape, strands of DNA, shown in gray, are coiled around histones, depicted as spheres. In MLL-rearranged ALL, a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia affecting infants, an enzyme call DOT1L modifies the histones by methylating them in an abnormal way (as indicated in orange), leading to inappropriate activation of cancer-promoting genes. Drugs inhibiting this enzyme could prevent a variety of cancerous changes in cells.

Credit: Eric Smith, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

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