A unique approach to understanding how cancer cells or microbes become capable of warding off drugs has earned a New Innovator Award from the... » More

A unique approach to understanding how cancer cells or microbes become capable of warding off drugs has earned a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health for an M. D. Anderson scientist.

Gábor Balázsi, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Systems Biology, will receive $1.5 million over five years under the highly competitive program. The NIH announced awards Thursday in three prestigious programs that fund bold ideas, with the potential to speedily translate research into improved human health.

Balázsi and colleagues are synthetic biologists who have created gene circuits that allow them to tightly control expression of a gene, dialing it from completely off through varying levels of expression to completely on.

A newly developed circuit also will permit them to control fluctuations in gene expression. This unique degree of control will allow more detailed investigation of the effects of genes involved in drug resistance.

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