Welcome to the Meyerson Lab!

Areas of Research

​Lung Cancer: The Meyerson laboratory, based at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT, is committed to discovering genomic alterations in lung cancer, the world's most lethal malignancy, and to translating these discoveries towards therapy through cellular and biochemical studies.

Using a combination of computational and experimental genomics approaches we have uncovered novel alterations in genes within receptor tyrosine kinase-regulated pathways e.g. EGFR, ERBB2, FGFR2, FGFR3, BRAF, ARAF, MAP2K1 & RIT1; and in genes regulating RNA splicing (U2AF1, RBM10) and chromatin remodeling (SMARCA4, ARID1A).

We collaborate with many groups within Dana-Farber such as the Bass, Beroukhim, Eck, Gray, Hahn, Janne, Johnson, Ligon, and Pellman groups; the Boehm, Getz, Golub, Lander, Love, and Schreiber laboratories at Broad Institute; and cancer researchers at other institutions.  

In 2004, the Meyerson laboratory, in collaboration with Dana-Farber colleagues, reported activating mutations in EGFR that conferred sensitivity to the EGFR-targeting inhibitor, gefitinib. This study was the first to reveal a mechanism underlying the efficacy of molecularly targeted therapy and established a rationale for screening patients' tumors for clinically actionable genetic alterations, a service offered today to every cancer patient receiving care at Dana-Farber.

Featured Lab Publication

Bullman et al. Science, 2017

Following the discovery of Fusobacterium nucleatum in human colorectal cancers by the Meyerson and Holt labs in 2011, Dr. Bullman and colleagues now report that Fusobacterium and its associated microbioata persist through metastasis and that the growth of Fusobacterium-containing tumors grown in mice can be diminished by treatment with an antibiotic that kills Fusobacterium.

Learn more about the story in this accompanying New York Times article.
Cancer Genomics: We use computational genomic approaches to uncover somatic genetic alterations in cancers, with a special focus on lung cancer, and have pioneered many experimental and computational methods in cancer genomics. Our group has led the investigation of somatic copy number alterations in over 10,000 human cancers, as part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program of the NIH. Major current research interests encompass single cell sequencing of cancers to elucidate tumor heterogeneity & evolution and the biology of pre-neoplastic lung lesions; analysis of circulating tumor DNA; alterations in non-coding regions of the cancer genome; and understanding germline predisposition to cancer.
Pathogen Discovery: We have developed a computational pipeline, PathSeq, to detect non-human DNA sequences in human diseased tissue samples, including—but not limited to—cancer. Through application of PathSeq we have uncovered a role for Fusobacterium nucleatum in pathogenesis of colon carcinoma and revealed a new bacterium—since named Bradyrhizobium enterica—as being associated with human cord colitis syndrome, a hematopoietic stem-cell transplant-associated syndrome of previously unknown etiology . We are expanding our investigations on the role of Fusobacterium in GI cancers and are exploring possible pathogenic bases for other human diseases of unknown origin.
Functional Genomics: We pair our genome-discovery efforts with biochemical and molecular experimental approaches, using lung cancer cell lines and transgenic mouse models. We study pathways that are subject to genomic alteration in lung cancers including the EGFR, FGFR and Ras pathways; those via the lineage oncogenes NKX2-1 and SOX2; and alterations in epigenetic and RNA splicing processes. We have developed new CRISPR-mediated genome engineering methods to study site-specific chromosomal rearrangements in cancer and are developing model systems to understand the role of aneuploidy in cancer. We are also investigating the impact of recurrent mutations in the MGA, RBM10, MYC, NFE2L2, RIT1 and U2AF1 genes in lung cancer.
Genome-Inspired Drug Discovery: A major focus of the laboratory is to leverage our knowledge of recurrently mutated genes in lung and other cancers to design therapies against these newly discovered molecular targets. In collaboration with Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and the Broad Institute we are developing drugs that target cellular pathways driven by the phosphodiesterase and hormone/nuclear receptor families. Recently, using predictive chemogenomics approaches, we have identified a potent and specific small molecule inhibitor effective against cancer cells expressing high levels of PDE3A, a member of the phosphodiesterase gene family.