Lab postdoc Sinan recently had his paper accepted! He scored and analyzed a tissue microarray of tumors from a Swedish cohort of paraganglioma patients. He could see that one of our favourite proteins, HIF-2a, is non-canonically expressed in the cytoplasm in these tumors. He also shows that presence of cytoplasmic HIF-2a functions as a biomarker to better diagnose and characterise patients with virtually untreatable metastatic paraganglioma. The paper includes a protocol for how to include HIF-2a as a diagnostic marker in the clinic, an advancement we hope will aid in tumor classification and choice of treatment regimens.
Congratulations to Sinan and Paula, and to all of us for the opportunity to celebrate (with Kir Royale)!