Richard Gregory leads collaborative research to understand role of tRNA modification in melanoma

Richard Gregory, PhD, has received a five-year NIH U01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study the role of tRNA modification reprogramming and translational remodeling in cancer. Dr. Gregory leads the collaborative grant, which brings together three other researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Elena Piskounova, PhD) and Brown University (Juan Alfonzo, PhD, and Sergej Djuranovic, PhD).

The grant was one of just three awarded under NCI’s RNA Modifications Driving Oncogenesis (RNAMoDO) initiative, which aims to “promote fundamental studies in the emerging area of RNA modifications that underlie the oncogenic process, focusing on the central role of RNA modifications in translational reprogramming of cancer cells.”

The project will comprehensively catalog tRNA modifications—and corresponding changes in mRNA translation—during melanoma progression and metastasis, and investigate the role of tRNAs and tRNA-modifying enzymes in stress response pathways, tumorigenesis, and metastasis. The results of the study will provide a deeper understanding of how tRNA modification reprogramming and translational remodeling contribute to cancer development, and may reveal tRNA-modifying enzymes as novel therapeutic targets.