BioCentury
ARTICLE | Cover Story

Super-enhancing discovery

April 25, 2013 7:00 AM UTC

Boston researchers have detailed a class of regulatory elements, dubbed super-enhancers, that control the expression of genes, including oncogenes, that are key to determining cellular identity.1,2 The findings may explain how some compounds that broadly inhibit particular epigenetic regulators can act selectively on oncogenes and could thus help identify new drug targets in cancer.

The team has founded Syros Pharmaceuticals Inc. to develop compounds that disrupt super-enhancers or the genes they regulate in cancer.3...