Unraveling the Menin Mystery to Halt Cancer Growth

Exciting news out of Dana-Farber on a  the development of new menin-targeting agents that showed promise in clinical trials involving adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), one of the hardest-to-treat forms of leukemia.

Scott Armstrong, MD, PhD, Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation Medical Research Award recipient in 2007 and current senior vice president for drug discovery and chief research strategy officer at Dana-Farber, was quick to see the potential of a new approach to AML therapy.

“My lab had a longstanding interest in how gene rearrangements like those that create the MLL fusion protein lead to leukemia,” Armstrong relates. “In 2006, we published a study identifying the specific set of genes controlled by the fusion protein. We began to look for ways to disrupt that protein’s function — to turn the leukemia program off.

“Over time, thanks to the work of Matt [Meyerson] and others, it became clear that menin is critical for the function of the fusion protein. That touched off a major effort by pharmaceutical firms to develop drugs able to inhibit menin.”

Read the full article here.