New FWF-grant approved: Decoding the epigenome and its regulation in neuroblastoma

CONGRATS to Irfete Fetahu, PhD, postdoc at St. Anna CCRI on receiving a Stand-Alone Grant from the Austrian Science fund FWF. Together with her PI Sabine-Taschner-Mandl from the Tumor Biology group and colleagues, Irfete has the ambitious goal to decode the epigenome and its regulation in neuroblastoma, a tumor that forms in certain types of nerve tissue and is the most common cancer in infants.

Whereas approximately 30% of neuroblastoma cases can be attributed to genetic mutations, the rest of the cases is still an enigma that captivates scientists and physicians.

To bring more light into the mechanisms involved in neuroblastoma development, Irfete intends to explore the genome-wide epigenetic landscapes of neuroblastoma, to determine if epigenetic defects are associated with the development of this malignant disease, and, finally, to study the molecular mechanisms governing its epigenetic regulation.