You have about 30,000 genes in your body. Every day they regulate the work of different types of cells to keep things running smoothly — repairing your bones, carrying oxygen throughout your body, fighting bacteria and managing all the processes that make you tick. Most of the time they work the way they’re supposed to.
But sometimes the genes that control cell growth go out of whack, enabling cells to multiply out of control. That’s how cancer begins.
In this fascinating podcast, Joyce Ohm, PhD, from the department of Cancer Genetics and Genomics at Roswell Park, gives a rare look into the exciting and mysterious world of genetics and cancer research going on at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center .
Selected Podcast
An Introduction into the Amazing World of Epigenetics
Featured Speaker:
Joyce Ohm, PhD
Joyce Ohm, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology, Department of Cancer Genetics and Genomics, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Transcription:
An Introduction into the Amazing World of Epigenetics
Bill Klaproth: Wouldn't it be great if we could turn cancer on and off? That would be really cool, wouldn't it? New research through epigenetics says that is possible. Here to talk with us about that is Dr. Joyce Ohm, an associate member of Department of Cancer Genetics and Genomics at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Thanks for your time today. Let's start here. What is epigenetics?
Dr. Joyce Ohm, Ph.D.: It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Epigenetics sounds like a big word, but it really isn't. One of the easiest ways we have to explain it is to just ask someone to look in a mirror. All of the cells in your body have pretty much the same DNA and yet when you look in a mirror, you can see that you have eyes and skins and hair and teeth and muscle. In order to develop all those different cell types, your body has to package that DNA away. They do that through a process we call epigenetics. It’s really the software that runs the cells and tells it how to behave, it tells it what kind of cell it is and it tells is how it may respond to different cues in the environment. Unfortunately, that packaging away for your DNA sometimes gets very messed up in cancer.
Bill: I love that phrase ‘the software that runs the cells.’ You paint a great picture of this, so what happens when the software has a glitch and doesn't work? Is that when cancer appears?
Dr. Ohm: It absolutely can. In fact, we often see epigenetic changes preceding any kinds of mutations that you might have in a cancer cell. Cells use these tools in this software in a way to respond to their environment, but you can start to imagine how when things go wrong in a cell, when things go wrong in response to the environment, the cell might get a little bit confused and so it turns on different genes and turns off different genes. If those things help the cell to divide or help it to survive when it shouldn’t, it can contribute to a tumor cell forming.
Bill: This is fascinating. How is epigenetics being used in cancer research? How is this coming together?
Dr. Ohm: For many years, the last couple of decades even, the work has been focused on understanding the basic science of epigenetics, understanding how this software runs, what can go wrong in a cancer cell and we really know a lot about that now. We know quite a bit about the different kinds of epigenetic changes that go wrong in a cancer cell, but what's been very exciting over the last several years is to see many of these basic science discoveries starting to be translated into the clinic. There are a wide range of drugs and new therapeutic options that target epigenetic changes in a cell. We’re starting to see those being used in patients, especially in combination with existing therapies with the hope that they can actually improve survival and increase our cure rate.
Bill: Those pills basically keep the software running properly?
Dr. Ohm: They do. In some cases, they tell a cell that their software is not running properly and that it’s time for that cell to go. In others, they’ll help a cell change the packaging a little bit so now they can respond better to chemotherapy or radiation or immunotherapy and other types of targeted measures that we can use in the clinic. Sometimes it’s tweaking a cell so that it can now respond in a way that it should have normally.
Bill: Speaking of tweaking a cell, I mentioned we may now have the ability to turn cancer on and off. Can you talk about lifestyle and how that plays a part in epigenetics, how we can help turn our cancer genes off?
Dr. Ohm: One of the really interesting things about the field of epigenetics that we've learned in recent years is that it really is a way for a cell to respond to its environment. Things like exercise, diet, smoking, obesity, all of these different conditions will change your epigenome. While that sounds a little scary at first, it's actually a little bit reassuring because if we can turn these genes on, the real advantage to epigenetics is we actually can also turn them off. Unlike genetic mutation in a cell, which we really can't go in and fix yet, we have the power to change our epigenomes. You can erase some of the bad decisions that some of us have made along the way, and over time, new habits and new behaviors can actually improve the health of our cells and make our epigenome function a little bit better.
Bill: Even though you may have a predisposition to a certain cancer gene, through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, etc., we can keep that bad gene potentially turned off.
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely. The one thing we know and have known for quite a while in cancer is that it's never just one thing that goes wrong in a cancer cell. Even though a cell might have a mutation or you may have a genetic predisposition, there are lots of other things that come into play to determine whether that cell will actually undergo what we call transformation and become cancerous. Yes, we still do have a considerable amount of control over things like environmental exposures and diet and exercise and some of those behaviors. Any time that we can make changes that can improve our overall health and fitness, we like to try and do that.
Bill: The message is ‘get and be as healthy as you can to potentially help any problems in your body or bad cancer genes, make sure they're turned off,’ right?
Dr. Ohm: I think that’s a great message. It’s one that isn't always the easiest to follow, but it’s important that when we can, we try and make good decisions.
Bill: If you could stare into your crystal ball for a moment, what does the future hold then for epigenetics and cancer research? This sounds really exciting.
Dr. Ohm: The field really has exploded in recent years, so I think you're going to continue to see people consider their epigenomes when they're studying what goes wrong in cancer. I think first thing we're going to see is we're going to continue to see new discoveries and new observations in what may go wrong in a cell, and anytime we find something new or increase our understanding or how cancer may have formed, we view that as an opportunity to go in and potentially fix it and develop new therapies. The other thing you're going to see in the immediate future is current and new epigenetic therapies continuing to be tested in the clinic through clinical trials, through the development of new therapeutic protocols. Epigenetic drugs don’t usually work great on their own, so I don’t think you're going to see that necessarily. What we’re seeing being really effective therapeutically is the combination of epigenetic therapies with other types of therapies like chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and so I think those are the developments that are going to move the fastest and really benefit our patients in the near term.
Bill: A combination of things. You mentioned epigenetics and immunotherapy working together to attack a cancer cell and kill it, something like that>
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the most exciting areas for us. It turns out that one of the things that goes wrong in your epigenome is that we don’t express the right protein on cells for your immune system to recognize them. If you can combine an epigenetic therapy that will increase the expression of those abnormal proteins or tumor antigens, then we can make the immunotherapy work better. Your immune cells can go in and actually recognize these abnormalities and changes in the cell. That’s really exciting and that’s some of the most impressive work that’s come out recently, trying to combine those two different types of treatments.
Bill: It’s like a one-two punch.
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely.
Bill: Can you talk to us about the new epigenetic center you're establishing at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center?
Dr. Ohm: Roswell Park has had for many years talented researchers working on different aspects of epigenetics and how it affects cancer and how it may be used for therapy, but what we’re seeing now is a real push to bring those researchers together across disciplines, across units, across departments and think as holistically as we can about how we can all work together so these discoveries can be moved most quickly and in the best strategies to help our patients. One of the ways that we can do that is to help build a virtual center for epigenetic research here at Roswell Park and our goal is to bring the researchers together and move things more quickly in the clinic.
Bill: So good to hear and we should all be very excited about this. Thank you so much for talking with us today. We appreciate it. For more information, visit roswellpark.org. That’s roswellpark.org. You're listening to Cancer Talk with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. I'm Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.
An Introduction into the Amazing World of Epigenetics
Bill Klaproth: Wouldn't it be great if we could turn cancer on and off? That would be really cool, wouldn't it? New research through epigenetics says that is possible. Here to talk with us about that is Dr. Joyce Ohm, an associate member of Department of Cancer Genetics and Genomics at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Thanks for your time today. Let's start here. What is epigenetics?
Dr. Joyce Ohm, Ph.D.: It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Epigenetics sounds like a big word, but it really isn't. One of the easiest ways we have to explain it is to just ask someone to look in a mirror. All of the cells in your body have pretty much the same DNA and yet when you look in a mirror, you can see that you have eyes and skins and hair and teeth and muscle. In order to develop all those different cell types, your body has to package that DNA away. They do that through a process we call epigenetics. It’s really the software that runs the cells and tells it how to behave, it tells it what kind of cell it is and it tells is how it may respond to different cues in the environment. Unfortunately, that packaging away for your DNA sometimes gets very messed up in cancer.
Bill: I love that phrase ‘the software that runs the cells.’ You paint a great picture of this, so what happens when the software has a glitch and doesn't work? Is that when cancer appears?
Dr. Ohm: It absolutely can. In fact, we often see epigenetic changes preceding any kinds of mutations that you might have in a cancer cell. Cells use these tools in this software in a way to respond to their environment, but you can start to imagine how when things go wrong in a cell, when things go wrong in response to the environment, the cell might get a little bit confused and so it turns on different genes and turns off different genes. If those things help the cell to divide or help it to survive when it shouldn’t, it can contribute to a tumor cell forming.
Bill: This is fascinating. How is epigenetics being used in cancer research? How is this coming together?
Dr. Ohm: For many years, the last couple of decades even, the work has been focused on understanding the basic science of epigenetics, understanding how this software runs, what can go wrong in a cancer cell and we really know a lot about that now. We know quite a bit about the different kinds of epigenetic changes that go wrong in a cancer cell, but what's been very exciting over the last several years is to see many of these basic science discoveries starting to be translated into the clinic. There are a wide range of drugs and new therapeutic options that target epigenetic changes in a cell. We’re starting to see those being used in patients, especially in combination with existing therapies with the hope that they can actually improve survival and increase our cure rate.
Bill: Those pills basically keep the software running properly?
Dr. Ohm: They do. In some cases, they tell a cell that their software is not running properly and that it’s time for that cell to go. In others, they’ll help a cell change the packaging a little bit so now they can respond better to chemotherapy or radiation or immunotherapy and other types of targeted measures that we can use in the clinic. Sometimes it’s tweaking a cell so that it can now respond in a way that it should have normally.
Bill: Speaking of tweaking a cell, I mentioned we may now have the ability to turn cancer on and off. Can you talk about lifestyle and how that plays a part in epigenetics, how we can help turn our cancer genes off?
Dr. Ohm: One of the really interesting things about the field of epigenetics that we've learned in recent years is that it really is a way for a cell to respond to its environment. Things like exercise, diet, smoking, obesity, all of these different conditions will change your epigenome. While that sounds a little scary at first, it's actually a little bit reassuring because if we can turn these genes on, the real advantage to epigenetics is we actually can also turn them off. Unlike genetic mutation in a cell, which we really can't go in and fix yet, we have the power to change our epigenomes. You can erase some of the bad decisions that some of us have made along the way, and over time, new habits and new behaviors can actually improve the health of our cells and make our epigenome function a little bit better.
Bill: Even though you may have a predisposition to a certain cancer gene, through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, etc., we can keep that bad gene potentially turned off.
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely. The one thing we know and have known for quite a while in cancer is that it's never just one thing that goes wrong in a cancer cell. Even though a cell might have a mutation or you may have a genetic predisposition, there are lots of other things that come into play to determine whether that cell will actually undergo what we call transformation and become cancerous. Yes, we still do have a considerable amount of control over things like environmental exposures and diet and exercise and some of those behaviors. Any time that we can make changes that can improve our overall health and fitness, we like to try and do that.
Bill: The message is ‘get and be as healthy as you can to potentially help any problems in your body or bad cancer genes, make sure they're turned off,’ right?
Dr. Ohm: I think that’s a great message. It’s one that isn't always the easiest to follow, but it’s important that when we can, we try and make good decisions.
Bill: If you could stare into your crystal ball for a moment, what does the future hold then for epigenetics and cancer research? This sounds really exciting.
Dr. Ohm: The field really has exploded in recent years, so I think you're going to continue to see people consider their epigenomes when they're studying what goes wrong in cancer. I think first thing we're going to see is we're going to continue to see new discoveries and new observations in what may go wrong in a cell, and anytime we find something new or increase our understanding or how cancer may have formed, we view that as an opportunity to go in and potentially fix it and develop new therapies. The other thing you're going to see in the immediate future is current and new epigenetic therapies continuing to be tested in the clinic through clinical trials, through the development of new therapeutic protocols. Epigenetic drugs don’t usually work great on their own, so I don’t think you're going to see that necessarily. What we’re seeing being really effective therapeutically is the combination of epigenetic therapies with other types of therapies like chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy, and so I think those are the developments that are going to move the fastest and really benefit our patients in the near term.
Bill: A combination of things. You mentioned epigenetics and immunotherapy working together to attack a cancer cell and kill it, something like that>
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely. In fact, that’s one of the most exciting areas for us. It turns out that one of the things that goes wrong in your epigenome is that we don’t express the right protein on cells for your immune system to recognize them. If you can combine an epigenetic therapy that will increase the expression of those abnormal proteins or tumor antigens, then we can make the immunotherapy work better. Your immune cells can go in and actually recognize these abnormalities and changes in the cell. That’s really exciting and that’s some of the most impressive work that’s come out recently, trying to combine those two different types of treatments.
Bill: It’s like a one-two punch.
Dr. Ohm: Absolutely.
Bill: Can you talk to us about the new epigenetic center you're establishing at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center?
Dr. Ohm: Roswell Park has had for many years talented researchers working on different aspects of epigenetics and how it affects cancer and how it may be used for therapy, but what we’re seeing now is a real push to bring those researchers together across disciplines, across units, across departments and think as holistically as we can about how we can all work together so these discoveries can be moved most quickly and in the best strategies to help our patients. One of the ways that we can do that is to help build a virtual center for epigenetic research here at Roswell Park and our goal is to bring the researchers together and move things more quickly in the clinic.
Bill: So good to hear and we should all be very excited about this. Thank you so much for talking with us today. We appreciate it. For more information, visit roswellpark.org. That’s roswellpark.org. You're listening to Cancer Talk with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. I'm Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.