Mentor Name: Rameen Beroukhim

Many of the most effective treatments for cancer work by damaging DNA. Examples include radiation therapy and common chemotherapies used across children’s and adult cancers. Cancers are often less able to fix their DNA than normal cells, so such DNA damage can be an effective treatment. However, different cancers differ in their ability to fix DNA, and this can have implications for which treatments are most effective. Unfortunately, we have only a limited ability to distinguish DNA damage repair characteristics of cancers in different people. Thus, we don’t know which treatments will be effective in different patients.