Kuang-hung Cheng and mentor Sam Thiagalingam

Disabling Smad signaling in human cancers has been implicated in the malignant progression of tumors. While frequent alterations in Smad4 have been primarily reported in pancreatic and gastrointestinal cancers, it is largely unknown whether other Smad genes are altered in tumors. To address the challenge of identifying other targets of inactivation in the Smad signaling pathways, we have developed a novel technique known as Targeted Expressed Gene Display (TEGD). TEGD enables the identification of related members of a large family of genes, as well as their variants and also enables the determination of their patterns of expression in tissues and tumors.