Discovering how Diffuse Midline Glioma begins

Project Title: Uncovering the chromatin landscape that confers the spatial-temporal cell context dependent vulnerability to histone H3K27M

The Dirks Lab is uncovering how one of the most devastating childhood brain cancers arises. Diffuse Midline Glioma (DMG) is childhood brain cancer with a typical survival time of less than one year. Cancer is the result of normal cells malfunctioning, and Dr. Dirks’s team suspects that brainstem cells at a specific time and place during the development of the brain are the ones that malfunction and become DMG. They seek to discover why these cells are vulnerable to becoming cancer, with the goal of figuring out a way to recognize and stop DMG formation earlier.