Fall 2024 Grantee Highlight:
Sam Peng

Sam Peng, PhD
Core Institute Member, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States, underscoring the urgent need to unravel its molecular mechanisms and improve therapeutic strategies. The ErbB receptor family plays a pivotal role in regulating cellular processes such as growth, differentiation, and survival. These receptors form pairs—or dimers—to initiate signals that control cell growth and survival. Mutations and misregulation in these pairings can lead to cancer and drug resistance. This project aims to uncover how ErbB receptors pair and interact in real time within living cells, especially in the presence of cancer-related mutations and therapies. To do so, the Peng Lab is developing powerful single-molecule imaging techniques to track individual receptors as they move and cluster on the cell surface. Together, these tools will reveal how different receptor combinations form, how long they persist, and how they respond to drugs—knowledge that could potentially lead to more effective and durable cancer treatments.