ATAC on tumour time: Defining the time-of-day variation in the cistrome of solid tumours

The biological clock, a.k.a. the circadian timing system, modulates behavior and physiology and synchronises human beings to the environmental cycles of night and day. For example, blood pressure rises along with heart rate even before we wake up to prepare us for getting out of bed. All cells in the body contain a molecular timing mechanism. Disruption of the clock, for example by shift- work/jet-lag or drugs can lead to diseases like obesity or cancer. Inversely, some diseases have been shown to lead to aberrant rest/activity patterns. Also, some cancer cells have been shown to have aberrant clocks. There is, however, no methodology to determine if a tumour contains a clock or not from a single biopsy.

However, this potentially holds the key to more effective chemotherapy while maintaining a low toxicity profile for the patients. Dr Swati Kumar working at the Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick has been awarded MLS funding for this work.  She and her team hope the results will open the possibility to interrogate the clock status, possibly even in already existing tumour bio-banks and help determine the role of the circadian clock in cancer progression and treatment as a clinical biomarker.