Jay L. Hess

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/11710

Identifying and Treating Leukemia

Jay L. Hess has worked in early stage drug discovery in academia and in establishing sequencing-based diagnostics to improve care for cancer patients. A board-certified Hematopathologist and author of more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters, Dr. Hess is considered one of the nation’s leaders in the epigenetics of leukemia. He continues to run an active NIH-funded research laboratory.

Dr. Hess became the 10th Dean of the IU School of Medicine (IUSM) and Vice President for University Clinical Affairs at Indiana University on September 1st, 2013. He joined IUSM after eight years at the University of Michigan, where he advanced the causes of translational research, pathology informatics and sequencing-based diagnostics.

While at Michigan, Dr. Hess helped establish the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, created one of the first pathology informatics divisions in the nation and led the University of Michigan Health Care System strategy implementation in personalized medicine. In 2012, he co-founded and chaired the board of directors for Paradigm, a sequencing-based not-for-profit diagnostics company that provides next generation sequencing and data analysis to improve care for cancer patients.

Dr. Hess’s work to address bottlenecks in clinical translation of more targeted and effective therapies is another example of how IUPUI’s faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Pharmacologic inhibition of the Menin-MLL interaction blocks progression of MLL leukemia in vivo
    (Elsevier, 2015-04-13) Borkin, Dmitry; He, Shihan; Miao, Hongzhi; Kempinska, Katarzyna; Pollock, Jonathan; Chase, Jennifer; Purohit, Trupta; Malik, Bhavna; Zhao, Ting; Wang, Jingya; Wen, Bo; Zong, Hongliang; Jones, Morgan; Danet-Desnoyers, Gwenn; Guzman, Monica L.; Talpaz, Moshe; Bixby, Dale L.; Sun, Duxin; Hess, Jay L.; Muntean, Andrew G.; Maillard, Ivan; Cierpicki, Tomasz; Grembecka, Jolanta; Dean, IU School of Medicine
    Chromosomal translocations affecting mixed lineage leukemia gene (MLL) result in acute leukemias resistant to therapy. The leukemogenic activity of MLL fusion proteins is dependent on their interaction with menin, providing basis for therapeutic intervention. Here we report the development of highly potent and orally bioavailable small-molecule inhibitors of the menin-MLL interaction, MI-463 and MI-503, and show their profound effects in MLL leukemia cells and substantial survival benefit in mouse models of MLL leukemia. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of these compounds in primary samples derived from MLL leukemia patients. Overall, we demonstrate that pharmacologic inhibition of the menin-MLL interaction represents an effective treatment for MLL leukemias in vivo and provide advanced molecular scaffold for clinical lead identification.
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    Targeting MLL1 H3K4 methyltransferase activity in mixed-lineage leukemia
    (Elsevier, 2014-01-23) Cao, Fang; Townsend, Elizabeth C.; Karatas, Hacer; Xu, Jing; Li, Li; Lee, Shirley; Liu, Liu; Chen, Yong; Ouillette, Peter; Zhu, Jidong; Hess, Jay L.; Atadja, Peter; Lei, Ming; Qin, Zhaohui; Malek, Sami; Wang, Shaomeng; Dou, Yali; IU School of Medicine
    Here we report a comprehensive characterization of our recently developed inhibitor MM-401 that targets the MLL1 H3K4 methyltransferase activity. MM-401 is able to specifically inhibit MLL1 activity by blocking MLL1-WDR5 interaction and thus the complex assembly. This targeting strategy does not affect other mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) family histone methyltransferases (HMTs), revealing a unique regulatory feature for the MLL1 complex. Using MM-401 and its enantiomer control MM-NC-401, we show that inhibiting MLL1 methyltransferase activity specifically blocks proliferation of MLL cells by inducing cell-cycle arrest, apoptosis, and myeloid differentiation without general toxicity to normal bone marrow cells or non-MLL cells. More importantly, transcriptome analyses show that MM-401 induces changes in gene expression similar to those of MLL1 deletion, supporting a predominant role of MLL1 activity in regulating MLL1-dependent leukemia transcription program. We envision broad applications for MM-401 in basic and translational research.
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    C/EBPα is an essential collaborator in Hoxa9/Meis1-mediated leukemogenesis
    (PNAS, 2014-07-08) Collins, Cailin; Wang, Jingya; Miao, Hongzhi; Bronstein, Joel; Nawer, Humaira; Xu, Tao; Figueroa, Maria; Muntean, Andrew G.; Hess, Jay L.; Department of Medicine, IU School of Medicine
    Homeobox A9 (HOXA9) is a homeodomain-containing transcription factor that plays a key role in hematopoietic stem cell expansion and is commonly deregulated in human acute leukemias. A variety of upstream genetic alterations in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) lead to overexpression of HOXA9, almost always in association with overexpression of its cofactor meis homeobox 1 (MEIS1) . A wide range of data suggests that HOXA9 and MEIS1 play a synergistic causative role in AML, although the molecular mechanisms leading to transformation by HOXA9 and MEIS1 remain elusive. In this study, we identify CCAAT/enhancer binding protein alpha (C/EBPα) as a critical collaborator required for Hoxa9/Meis1-mediated leukemogenesis. We show that C/EBPα is required for the proliferation of Hoxa9/Meis1-transformed cells in culture and that loss of C/EBPα greatly improves survival in both primary and secondary murine models of Hoxa9/Meis1-induced leukemia. Over 50% of Hoxa9 genome-wide binding sites are cobound by C/EBPα, which coregulates a number of downstream target genes involved in the regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation. Finally, we show that Hoxa9 represses the locus of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors Cdkn2a/b in concert with C/EBPα to overcome a block in G1 cell cycle progression. Together, our results suggest a previously unidentified role for C/EBPα in maintaining the proliferation required for Hoxa9/Meis1-mediated leukemogenesis.