Matthew Meyerson, M.D., Ph.D.

September 10, 2012, 9:39AM

By Mike Miller

Matthew Meyerson, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of pathology from the Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Mass., and associate professor of pathology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, led the writing committee for The Cancer Genome Atlas project on lung squamous cell cancer. He recently discussed his perspective on the findings.

NCI: Were there genes identified in the TCGA study that were unexpected, or was it more a matter that nobody has really interrogated the squamous cell genome that carefully heretofore?

Meyerson: I’d say the most unexpected finding was of some loss-of-function mutations in the HLA-A gene, which encodes a major histocompatability complex that plays an important immune regulatory role on the surface of cells. HLA-A codes for a protein on the surface of most cells that presents antigens to the immune system. Read more…