BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Blanketly blocking MLL

Boosting wild-type MLL to stop the translocated version from causing cancer

January 26, 2017 7:14 PM UTC

Seven years after it discovered the unifying factor underlying the 70 seemingly unrelated translocations that all lead to mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL), a Northwestern team has devised a therapeutic strategy that could work across virtually all versions of the disease.

In 2010, a group led by Ali Shilatifard discovered that the vast majority of loci into which the MLL gene translocates - which were previously thought to be unrelated - encode members of the super-elongation complex (SEC) that regulates transcriptional elongation of DNA. Shilatifard is chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine...