Marikki Laiho
Targeting cancer transcriptional programs
Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor in Radiation Oncology
Department of Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences
School of Medicine
Research Overview
The particular interest of our lab is to understand the regulatory events that prevail in cancer cells, and detect and exploit cancer cell characteristics that could be used as basis of new cancer therapies. The approaches used in the laboratory are aimed to provide novel information on the regulation of cellular DNA damage and tumorigenesis pathways, to identify new targets for therapy, and to apply this knowledge to therapy efforts. The studies aim at a rapid transfer of findings arising from focused mechanistic studies into translational cancer research.
Additional Titles
Director, Division of Molecular Radiation Sciences
Selected Publications
- Fan W, Eklund E, Sherman RM, Liu H, Pitts S, Ford B, NV Rajeskumar, Laiho M. Widespread germline genetic heterogeneity of human ribosomal RNA genes. RNA, 2022.
- Pitts S, Liu H, Ibrahim A, Garg A, Felgueira CM, Begum A, Fan W, Teh S, Low JY, Ford B, Schneider DA, Hay R, Laiho M. Identification of an E3 ligase that targets the catalytic subunit of RNA polymerase I upon transcription stress. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2022.
- Wei T, Najmi SM, Liu H, Peltonen K, Kucerova A, Schneider DA, Laiho M. Small-Molecule Targeting of RNA Polymerase I Activates a Conserved Transcription Elongation Checkpoint. Cell Reports, 2018.
- Peltonen K, Colis L, Liu H, Jäämaa S, Zhang Z, Af Hällström T, Moore HM, Sirajuddin P, Laiho M. Small molecule BMH-compounds that inhibit RNA polymerase I and cause nucleolar stress. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2014.
- Peltonen K, Colis L, Liu H, Trivedi R, Moubarek MS, Moore HM, Bai B, Rudek MA, Bieberich CJ, Laiho M. A targeting modality for destruction of RNA polymerase I that possesses anticancer activity. Cancer Cell, 2014.