Alan Cantor, MD, PhD

Department	Hematology/Oncology
Hospital Title	Assistant in Medicine
Academic Title	Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Phone	617-919-2015
Fax	617-730-0222
Email	Alan Cantor
Location	300 Longwood Avenue Karp 7 Boston MA 02115

Research Overview

Alan Cantor's laboratory is focused on further elucidating the transcriptional mechanisms that regulate normal hematopoiesis and understanding how they are perturbed in certain inherited blood disorders and hematologic malignancies. They are also interested in understanding the mechanisms that regulate human developmental globin gene switching and applying this knowledge to the treatment of beta-hemoglobinopathies such as sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia. Cantor and colleagues are specifically interested in the role of GATA, FOG, RUNX and ETS family transcription factors and their association with epigenetic regulators and cell-signaling molecules.

The Cantor laboratory is currently taking a number of approaches to these studies. These include: (1) proteomic techniques to isolate and characterize multiprotein complexes involving these factors; (2) chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled to high throughput DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq) to identify sites occupied by these transcription factors across the genome; (3) gene targeting in mice; (4) shRNA-mediated gene knock down in primary human CD34+-derived cells; (5) analysis of patient derived induced pluripotent (iPS) stem cells; and (6) whole exome sequencing and genetic linkage studies of families with inherited thrombocytopenia and predisposition to leukemia.

About Alan Cantor

Alan Cantor is a graduate of Washington University Medical School. He completed an internship and residency at St. Louis Children's Hospital and a postgraduate fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Key Publications

• Woo A, Moran TB, Choe S-K, Schindler Y., Sullivan MR, Fujiwara Y, Paw BH, Cantor AB. 2008. Identification of ZBP-89 as a Novel GATA-1 Associated Transcription Factor Involved in Megakaryocytic and Erythroid Development. Mol. Cell. Bio. 28:2675-2689; PMID: 1825015; PMCID: PMC2293107.

• Sankaran VG, Menne TF, Xu J, Akie TE, Lettre G, Handel BV, Mikkola, HKA, Hirshhorn JN, Cantor AB, Orkin SH. 2008. Human Fetal Hemoglobin Expression is Regulated by the Developmental Stage-specific Repressor BCL11A. Science 322:1839-1842; PMID: 19056937

• Huang H, Yu M, Akie TE, Moran TB, Woo AJ, Tu N, Waldon Z, Lin YY, Steen H, Cantor AB. 2009. Differentiation-dependent Interactions between RUNX-1 and FLI-1 During Megakaryocyte Development, Mol. Cell. Bio. 29:4103-15; PMID: 19470763; PMCID: PMC2715817.

• Yu M, Riva L, Xie H, Schindler Y, Moran TB, Cheng Y, Yu D, Hardison R, Weiss MJ, Orkin SH, Bernstein BE, Fraenkel E, Cantor AB. 2009. Insights into GATA-1 Mediated Gene Activation versus Repression via Genome-wide Chromatin Occupancy Analysis. Molecular Cell, 36: 682-695. [NIHMS 163436]; PMID: 19941827; PMCID: PMC2800995.

• Bai, X, Kim J, Yang Z, Jurynec MJ, Akie TE, Lee J, LeBlanc J, Sessa A, Hong J, DiBiase A, Zhou Y, Grunwald DJ, Lin S, Cantor AB, Orkin SH, Zon LI. 2010. TIF1γ controls erythroid cell fate by regulating transcription elongation. Cell 142:133-143. PMID: 20603019; PMCID: PMC3072682

• Kim J, Woo AJ, Chu J, Snow J, Fujiwara Y, Kim CG, Cantor AB, Orkin SH. 2010. Separable core pluripotency, polycomb, and Myc network modules in embryonic stem cells and cancer. Cell, 143:184-6. PMID: 20946988; PMCID: PMC3018841.

• Woo AJ, Kim J, Xu J, Huang H, Cantor AB. 2011. Role of ZBP-89 in Human Globin Gene Regulation and Erythroid Differentiation. Blood, 118:3684-3693. PMID 21828133.

• Yu M, Mazor T, Huang H, Huang H-T, Kathrein KL, Woo AJ, Chouinard CR, Labadorf A, Akie TE, Moran TB, Xie H, Zacharek S, Taniuchi I, Roeder RG, Kim CF, Zon LI, Fraenkel E, Cantor AB. 2012. Direct Recruitment of Polycomb Repressive Complex 1 to Chromatin by Core Binding Transcription Factors. Molecular Cell 45:330-343. [NIHMS 349597]. PMID: 22325351

• Huang H, Woo AJ, Waldon Z, Schindler Y, Moran TB, Zhu HH, Feng G-S, Steen H, Cantor AB. 2012. A Src Family Kinase-Shp2 Axis Controls RUNX1 Activity in Megakaryocyte and T Lymphocyte Differentiation. Genes Dev 26: 1587-1601; Published in Advance July 3.