Dear Rogel Cancer Center Members,

Welcome to another edition of Instrumental!

Rogel Shared Resources (SR) are known for their state-of-the-art instrumentation and top-notch services. Another key component of each SR is to provide access to training. Each facility is equipped with expert leadership and staff who are committed to engaging with our scientific workforce to showcase the technologies available within the SRs and to help you consider which of these may be beneficial to your next project.

Our Shared Resources may also offer hands-on instrument training to allow for self-operation at discounted rates or workshops to communicate best practices for data analysis. Depending on the facility, training may come in different modalities and at different frequencies.

In this edition, we highlight upcoming events that offer opportunities for you to engage with our resources. We recognize the continued contributions of Thomas Saunders, Ph.D., emeritus professor, and past director of the Transgenic Animal Model Shared Resource on the publication of his book, Transgenesis: Methods and Protocols.

These are just a couple of ways our Shared Resources disseminate their knowledge. If you seek additional training experiences, we encourage you to reach out to SR personnel via email or by scheduling formal coursework or consultations.

Thank you for your time, 

Evan T. Keller, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Associate Director for Shared Resources

Rogel Cancer Center

Rogel laboratories seeking to discover and evaluate new therapeutic agents that may one day lead to novel approaches to cancer treatment can rely on the Structure and Drug Screening Shared Resource (SDS-SR). Through a collaboration of Structural Biology, High-Throughput Screening, and Medicinal Chemistry, SDS-SR is poised to support early-stage drug development through lead optimization.

Projects progress through a milestone-driven research plan that is both efficient and effective in the discovery and development of precision oncology medicines. To learn more about why you should make SDS-SR one of your first stops on the road to developing a new cancer therapeutic, check out this presentation by Jeanne Stuckey, Ph.D., managing director, Center for Structural Biology. 

A recent manuscript from the laboratory of Shaomeng Wang, Ph.D. discussed how targeted protein degradation was utilized to discover a therapeutic agent against a previously considered “undruggable” protein target. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) plays a role in initiation, progression, and maintenance of certain hematological malignancies, such as chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and in T-cell-derived leukemia and lymphoma.

The Structure and Drug Screening Shared Resource (SDS-SR) contributed to the identification of AK-2292 the first potent, highly selective, and efficacious degrader of STAT5. The SDS-SR designed and produced seven different STAT proteins, including two isoforms of STAT5, for the Wang lab to screen against in their pursuit of a compound that selectively binds to STAT5. As compounds were identified, the SR co-crystallized the compounds to STAT5, solved their respective structures and performed structural analysis to determine why the compounds bound tighter to STAT5 than other STAT proteins.

Additional details about this study and a link to the full manuscript can be found here.