Named Grant:

The Cheri Meyer Memorial Award and Dr. Leo Gordon and Team Honorary Award

About the Investigator:

Dr. Reches is interested in understanding the role of RNA-based mechanisms in cellular transformation and utilizing these mechanisms to identify new possible cancer therapies. She received her B.Sc. in Life Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and continued there for graduate research under the supervision of Dr. Ofer Mandelboim in the Department of Immunology, focusing on how the immune system protects from cancer. She is currently carrying out postdoctoral training with Dr. Daphna Nachmani in the Department of Genetics at the Hebrew University. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Reches is investigating how modification of RNAs critical to protein synthesis affects proliferation of leukemia cells, and whether the modification pathways may provide a new therapeutic target. Her goal is to become an independent researcher, applying the expertise she developed during postdoctoral training to identify molecular pathways that may serve as novel targets for cancer therapy.

About the Research:

Rapid and unregulated proliferation is a hallmark of cancer cells, especially leukemia. To support this rapid proliferation, cells must accelerate synthesis of proteins. Protein synthesis is carried out by complex molecular machines, called ribosomes, which themselves consist of both protein and RNA. Modification of the RNA components of the ribosome occurs in cancer cells, but the pathways that generate the “cancer-ribosome” are not well described. Dr. Reches is working to identify the modifications in ribosomal RNAs that are key to the rapid proliferation of leukemic cells. She will focus on the pathway that modifies RNA by adding a methyl group (CH3) to the backbone of RNA molecules, and use cutting-edge techniques to identify the sites of modification and how they change during transition from normal to leukemic cells. She will then ask if leukemic cell proliferation can be controlled by eliminating critical steps in those pathways, with the goal of identifying novel targets for new therapies for leukemia.