Putting breast cancer cells to sleep

Recently in the lab of Xiaoting Zhang, Ph.D., breast cancer cells were multiplying out of control as usual. Then the unexpected happened—all that tumor-building bustle came to an abrupt halt. It happened when Zhang, a cancer biologist at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and his research team disabled a protein called MED1. Now they’re trying to uncover the biological mechanisms for how this happens, raising the prospect that a MED1-targeted therapy could be developed to lull breast cancer cells into a permanent sleep, known as senescence. Read more here.