Qin Yan
Yale University, CT·Genetics
Melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, can now often be treated with targeted drugs and immunotherapy, which helps the patient's own immune system attack the tumor. Yet nearly all patients with advanced melanoma eventually become resistant to targeted drugs, and about half do not respond to immunotherapy.
- Fields
Genetics
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
melanoma
skin cancer
histone demethylase
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Dissect how loss of the epigenetic regulators KDM5B and SETDB1 triggers anti-tumor immune responses, testing whether it works by de-repressing retroelements, virus-like DNA normally kept silent, in melanoma models.
- Evaluate the therapeutic potential of depleting KDM5B in melanoma using first-in-class KDM5B degraders, molecules designed to destroy the protein, in preclinical melanoma models.
- Test whether levels of retroelements suppressed by KDM5B and SETDB1 in human melanomas can predict which patients will respond to immune checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.
More about the research
Doctors also lack good tests that predict who will benefit. This project asks whether switching off two proteins that control how genes are packaged can wake up the immune system against melanoma, and whether ancient virus-like DNA hidden in our genomes can serve as a predictor of treatment response.
Why it matters
People with advanced melanoma often stop responding to targeted therapy or never respond to immunotherapy. This work could establish KDM5B, a histone demethylase, as a drug target, offer ways to boost the body's anti-tumor immune response, and provide retroelement-based biomarkers that help doctors predict which patients are likely to benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ashish Ranjan
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Determine how well histotripsy plus anti-CD40 antibody microparticles works in mouse melanoma models that differ in immune visibility and tumor burden.
Carrie Daniel-MacDougall
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a prebiotic food-enriched diet (PreFED), delivered as prebiotic foods plus nutrition counseling, changes the gut microbiome and blood metabolites of metastatic melanoma patients receiving checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.
Marlies Meisel
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether checkpoint-inhibitor-response-associated gut bacteria convert dietary tryptophan into molecules that activate the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) and strengthen interferon-gamma-producing Tc1 CD8 T cells, in cell culture.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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