What is it that goes so wrong when cancer cells develop the ability to divide indefinitely?

Dr. Johannes Walter joined the TheoryLab podcast to help answer that question. He and his lab are at the leading edge of discovery science aimed at understanding DNA replication and repair, areas that are critical to understanding cancer and developing new therapies.

Johannes Walter, PhD, is an American Cancer Society Research Professor, Professor of Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School, and Member of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Research Professor. He’s also the co-founder of MOMA Therapeutics, which aims to “discover the next generation of precision medicines by targeting the molecular machines that underlie human disease.”

3:04 – What is DNA? Why is it so important to cell division?

7:39 – What causes DNA damage?

11:34 – How damaged DNA is most often repaired

14:36 – When DNA repair goes wrong

17:43 – Using frog egg extract to study DNA repair and understand cancer in humans

21:44 – Why frog egg extract? Why not an extract from human cells?

24:47 – While cells have around 10 different strategies for repairing DNA, his lab is studying a process where DNA repair is coupled with DNA replication

29:05 – On what can go wrong in a cancerous cell

32:00 – “Synthetic lethality” – an exciting way that his research into DNA repair could lead to improved cancer treatments

35:27 – How his team recently began to work on something called strand discontinuity

38:13 – How ACS funding has impacted his career

40:34 – A message he’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers