Developing new therapeutic strategies for ALT positive sarcomas

Alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) is a telomere maintenance mechanism that is enriched in mesenchymal cancers such as sarcomas. This dependency on ALT presents opportunities for identifying new vulnerabilities in this group of rare cancers. Focusing on soft tissue sarcomas, in this project the student will use a combination of high content imaging screens and proteomic analysis to identify emerging drug targets in the DNA damage response and replication stress pathways that are selective for ALT-positive cancers. This project has the potential to define new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of patients with ALT-positive sarcomas.