Dr.Keenan Hartert presents "For Whom the Cell Tolls.." at CESR Lecture

Biological Sciences professor Dr. Keenan Hartert will give a talk “For Whom the Cell Tolls: Can Genomics Facilitate a Precision Medicine Approach Against Blood Cancers?” as part of the Center for Excellence in Scholarship and Research's (CESR) Lectureship Series. 

About Dr. Keenan Hartert:

Dr. Hartert completed his Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2018. He is currently an assistant professor of biology at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and he is the host of the cancer biology podcast series, For Whom the Cell Tolls (available on Spotify and Apple).

A bit about the talk: 

Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most commonly diagnosed white blood cell cancer, adding 90,000 patients per year. Those that fail firstline treatments face a dismal outlook despite the advent of Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy. Our integrative genomic analyses highlight that losses of TP53, CDKN1A, and TNFRSF10B genes promote an extremely poor patient prognosis and immune response. Adding to the partnerships between genetic lesions, high levels of the BRD4 gene co-occur, further lowering T-cell levels, reducing potential CAR-T success. Following these results, we designated a novel drug combination targeting key growth genes from this pathway: BRD4 and CDK4/6, observing strong synergy rates that could play a role in future clinical trials.