AMS Weekly Seminar: Andy Feinberg (Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) @ Whitehead 304)

Title: Cancer is a disease of epigenetic stochasticity
Abstract: I proposed in 2006 (Nat Rev Genet) that increased epigenetic stochasticity is a driving force of tumor progression from its origin to metastasis, and would allow rapid selection for tumor cell survival at the expense of the host. This model puts epigenetic instability at the heart of tumor progression and is the primary target of cancer mutations. Several recent observations from the laboratory confirm the model, and establish mechanisms including disruption of the epigenome that involving blocks of DNA hypomethylation and heterochromatin, and metabolic changes involving the oxidative branch of the pentose phosphate pathway. We have recently developed mathematically rigorous Gibbs-Boltzmann-style epigenetic landscapes incorporating stochasticity and shown its relationship to entropy in information theory. Recent data shows that this approach identifies epigenetic and genetic drivers of cancer, using acute lymphoblastic leukemia as a model, as well as the close relationship between entropy in cancer and entropy in stem cell reprogramming.