Marcus Buschbeck, researcher at the Institute of Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC) of Badalona has explained its latest advances in the investigation of a protein involved in DNA packaging and its involvement in cell differentiation in the October 21 cycle IDIBELL seminars.

The aim of Buschbeck group is to understand how cell changes its phenotype and as regulated their level of chromatin; how it organizes and packages the DNA information. According to him, if we imagine a library, “the book would be the DNA and how they are divided by sections, tables or the store would be epigenetics which makes some information is more important than another. We still do not understand the structure of the library. ”

To understand better they are studying histone variant MacroH2A and they have seen that is involved in cell differentiation, “not only in embryonic development but also in existing tissues, so that could have a role in the development of cancer.”

“The challenge is to understand epigenetic changes involved in cancer and use this information either to investigate new treatments, or more importantly, to make an early diagnosis of cancer. In the future we should be able to detect epigenetic alterations before cancer develops.”