Fox Chase Graduate Student Billy Truong Recognized With ASH Abstract Achievement Award

Billy Truong, a doctoral candidate at Fox Chase Cancer Center, was awarded the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Abstract Achievement Award for a poster that he presented at the 64th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition.

“I’m very grateful to be recognized by ASH for the second time, and more importantly, to be a part of this project, which addresses a critical gap in knowledge for mitogen-activated protein kinase-targeted therapy, otherwise known as MAPK, for myeloproliferative neoplasm treatment,” said Truong, who is working towards his degree in the lab of David Wiest, PhD, Scientific Director of the Research Institute of Fox Chase and a professor in the Nuclear Dynamics and Cancer research program.

“The advances that we made support a collective mission here at the center to discover and investigate novel strategies to target incurable cancers,” Truong added.

Much of the research effort in studying MAPK signaling in cancer, Truong said, has been thwarted by resistance and toxicity associated with targeting the kinase activity of ERK, a kinase which is also very important for cell survival and immune responses. The research team believes that by preserving ERK kinase activity and redirecting it to anti-tumor substrates, they can identify novel targets that are more pertinent to cancer progression while limiting toxic effects.

Earlier research by Truong and his colleagues examined ERK binding interactions with its substrates in a collection of blood cancers called myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). The work describes how two distinct binding sites, D and DBP, play opposing roles in the progression of MPN. The research team found that interactions with the D binding site supports cancer, while the DBP binding site opposes it.

Truong’s abstract is titled “ERK2 Substrate Binding Domains Play Distinct Roles in Megakaryocytic-Erythroid Lineage Progression and Mediates Clonal Fitness in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms.” In addition to researchers from the Nuclear Dynamics and Cancer research program at Fox Chase, other collaborators included researchers from the Fels Cancer Institute for Personalized Medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

“This work gives us a foundational basis to perform a drug screen of novel compounds that selectively inhibit the D-domain but spares DBP function for the treatment of myeloproliferative neoplasms,” Truong said.

“As treatment of myelofibrosis become increasingly challenging due to the shortcomings of drugs like the JAK1/2 inhibitor ruxolitnib, these results pave an innovative path to discovering a novel class of targets that play an important role in the progression of myelofibrosis.”

The ASH Abstract Achievement Award is a merit-based award for trainees who are the first author and presenter on a high-scoring annual meeting abstract.