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Javaid, Sarah

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Javaid

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Javaid, Sarah

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2014 - 20153

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Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.0988383e-5b99-4039-9340-37e1ed24aab8

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Dynamic Chromatin Modification Sustains Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition following Inducible Expression of Snail-1
    (2014) Javaid, Sarah; Zhang, Jianmin; Anderssen, Endre; Black, Josh C.; Wittner, Ben; Tajima, Ken; Ting, David; Smolen, Gromoslaw A.; Zubrowski, Matthew; Desai, Rushil; Maheswaran, Shyamala; Ramaswamy, Sridhar; Whetstine, Johnathan; Haber, Daniel
    SUMMARY Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is thought to contribute to cancer metastasis, but its underlying mechanisms are not well understood. To define early steps in this cellular transformation, we analyzed human mammary epithelial cells with tightly regulated expression of Snail-1, a master regulator of EMT. After Snail-1 induction, epithelial markers were repressed within 6 hr, and mesenchymal genes were induced at 24 hr. Snail-1 binding to its target promoters was transient (6–48 hr) despite continued protein expression, and it was followed by both transient and long-lasting chromatin changes. Pharmacological inhibition of selected histone acetylation and demethylation pathways suppressed the induction as well as the maintenance of Snail-1-mediated EMT. Thus, EMT involves an epigenetic switch that may be prevented or reversed with the use of small-molecule inhibitors of chromatin modifiers.
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    Collective and Individual Migration following the Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition
    (2014) Wong, Ian Y.; Javaid, Sarah; Wong, Elisabeth A.; Perk, Sinem; Haber, Daniel; Toner, Mehmet; Irimia, Daniel
    During cancer progression, malignant cells in the tumour invade surrounding tissues. This transformation of adherent cells to a motile phenotype has been associated with the epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT). Here, we show that EMT-activated cells migrate through micropillar arrays as a collectively advancing front that scatters individual cells. Individual cells with few neighbours dispersed with fast, straight trajectories, whereas cells that encountered many neighbours migrated collectively with epithelial biomarkers. We modelled these emergent dynamics using a physical analogy to solidification phase transitions in binary mixtures, and validated it using drug perturbations, which revealed that individually migrating cells exhibit diminished chemosensitivity. Our measurements also indicate a degree of phenotypic plasticity as cells interconvert between individual and collective migration. The study of multicellular behaviours with single-cell resolution should enable further quantitative insights into heterogeneous tumour invasion.
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    Correlating chemical sensitivity and basal gene expression reveals mechanism of action
    (Springer Nature, 2015) Rees, Matthew G; Seashore-Ludlow, Brinton; Cheah, Jaime H; Adams, Drew J; Price, Edmund V; Gill, Shubhroz; Javaid, Sarah; Coletti, Matthew E; Jones, Victor; Bodycombe, Nicole E; Soule, Christian K; Alexander, Benjamin; Li, Ava; Montgomery, Philip; Kotz, Joanne D; Hon, C Suk-Yee; Munoz, Benito; Liefeld, Ted; Dancík, Vlado; Haber, Daniel A; Clish, Clary B; Bittker, Joshua A; Palmer, Michelle; Wagner, Bridget K; Clemons, Paul A; Shamji, Alykhan; Schreiber, Stuart
    Changes in cellular gene expression in response to small-molecule or genetic perturbations have yielded signatures that can connect unknown mechanisms of action (MoA) to ones previously established. We hypothesized that differential basal gene expression could be correlated with patterns of small-molecule sensitivity across many cell lines to illuminate the actions of compounds whose MoA are unknown. To test this idea, we correlated the sensitivity patterns of 481 compounds with ~19,000 basal transcript levels across 823 different human cancer cell lines and identified selective outlier transcripts. This process yielded many novel mechanistic insights, including the identification of activation mechanisms, cellular transporters, and direct protein targets. We found that ML239, originally identified in a phenotypic screen for selective cytotoxicity in breast cancer stem-like cells, most likely acts through activation of fatty acid desaturase 2 (FADS2). These data and analytical tools are available to the research community through the Cancer Therapeutics Response Portal.