Mr. Santanu Adhikary Graduate Student

I have been working in the field of chromatin biology for past 5 years. My doctoral research  gave me a great exposure in chromatin biology. A major part of his work, involves in delineating the therapeutic challenges faced due to gain in drug resistance in cancer cells and how chromatin reader, ZMYND8 repress these poised oncogenes, acting as chemosensitizer. We found that ZMYND8 suppresses stemness, drug resistance and tumor promoting genes. Low dose of chemotherapeutic drugs like doxorubicin or 5-flurouracil promotes tumorigenicity. We found reinstating ZMYND8, chemo sensitizes and suppresses doxorubicin induced tumor phenotypes in vivo. Our study showed ZMYND8 represses these poised oncogenes through its interaction with KDM5C and EZH2. Thus, ZMYND8 represses poised oncogenes through its association with epigenetic repressors in chemo-refractory breast carcinoma (Mukherjee, Adhikary et al, Cell Death Dis., 2020).