Seminar Series: Heide Ford

Heide Ford, professor and CU Medicine Endowed Chair in the department of pharmacology at University of Colorado Anschutz, will be a speaker for the Purdue Institute for Cancer Research 2026-27 Seminar Series. The event is hosted by Katie Hebron.

Identifying Novel Transcriptional and Epigenetic Means to Target Rhabdomyosarcoma

Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a pediatric sarcoma driven by aberrant transcriptional regulation. In this seminar, I will discuss identification of a pan-RMS core regulatory circuit (CRC) of myogenic master transcription factors that sustains tumor identity across fusion-positive and fusion-negative disease. I will further discuss novel means we have uncovered to target this circuitry through combined inhibition of epigenetic and transcriptional cofactors, which synergistically suppresses oncogenic transcription, induces tumor cell death and inhibits RMS growth in vitro and in vivo. I will discuss how disruption of CRC function may be a promising therapeutic approach for RMS.

The Ford Lab studies the parallels between normal development and tumorigenesis/tumor progression. They focus on understanding how developmental transcription factors are utilized by tumor cells to promote early embryonic processes in the context of cancer, processes that enable tumor progression and metastasis.  In addition to studying how developmental transcription factors influence the cancer cells themselves, the lab also examines how the immune microenvironment is influenced by re-expression of developmental proteins in cancer cells. The lab focuses on breast cancers, brain cancers (both the pediatric cancer, medulloblastoma, and the highly aggressive adult cancer,  glioblastoma), as well as pediatric sarcomas (rhabdomyosarcoma and Ewing sarcoma).