Christine Eyler, MD, PhD, the Butler Harris Assistant Professor in Radiation Oncology, hopes her research will help find more effective ways to vanquish tumors. She examines how tumors change during radiation treatment, with the goal of identifying new targets for therapy. She is currently investigating rectal cancer.

Dr. Eyler subjects rectal cancer organoids – three-dimensional cultures of cells from patients’ tumors – to treatments including radiation and chemotherapy to investigate how tumor response changes over time, both genetically and epigenetically. 

In addition to studying irradiated rectal cancer, Dr. Eyler uses new technology to learn about how epigenetic changes promote cancer growth in the first place. A common type of epigenetic change is called methylation, in which the addition or subtraction of a molecule called methyl influences gene expression. Another epigenetic player involves the architecture of chromatin, the proteins that form the structural scaffolding for DNA. Changes in the architecture of chromatin can bring certain proteins and genes in a long DNA strand close to one another, influencing whether or not those genes are expressed. Dr. Eyler is using new technology to shine a light on that architecture. Understanding how gene dysregulation leads to cancer could yield important new information about how to stop it.