The Knoepfler Lab conducts stem and cancer cell as well as chromatin/epigenetics research at the UC Davis School of Medicine, Sacramento, CA 95817
Please visit Dr. Knoepfler’s departmental site .
You can contact Dr. Knoepfler at: knoepfler@ucdavis.edu .
The Knoepfler Lab currently receives funding from NIH, CIRM, and the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.
Research. The Knoepfler Lab is interested in epigenetics and chromatin, and the cellular machinery that regulates these states normally in stem cells and aberrantly in cancer particularly brain tumors. What are the shared and distinct molecular events in normal and cancer stem cells? What role does Myc play?
We were the first to argue for the new paradigm of the Myc protein, which has important roles in cancer and pluripotency, fulfilling a global chromatin function in addition to being a gene-specific transcription factor.
We have followed that up with functional genomics and other studies over the last several years. Our 2011 paper on Miz-1 and Myc achieved three milestones. It was the first functional genomics study of Miz-1, it was the first paper to study Myc genomic function in human ESC (interestingly all the other studies were in mouse ESC), and it was the first to study in parallel the genomic function of Myc and a cofactor. Our recent 2012 paper on the similarities between iPS cells and cancer cells was a first in the field as well. We are also interested in basic chromatin and epigenomics events.
Our big picture goal is to impact human health through discoveries in cancer and stem cell biology.
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