Matthew Meyerson, M.D., Ph.D. and the members of his laboratory concentrate their research efforts on discovering genomic alterations in human cancer, with a particular emphasis on carcinoma of the lung, and on understanding the biological and therapeutic implications of these genome alterations. This research focuses on three major discovery areas in the cancer genome: mutations, copy number alterations, and infectious agents. The Meyerson laboratory has discovered mutations in BRAF in lung adenocarcinoma and EGFR in lung adenocarcinoma and glioblastoma; has demonstrated together with colleagues that the lung adenocarcinoma EGFR mutations are associated with response to gefitinib and erlotinib, and explored the biochemical mechanisms of these responses; and has collaborated in the discovery of JAK2 mutations in myeloproliferative diseases. Dr. Meyerson and his colleagues have also demonstrated a link between tumor suppression and histone modification in endocrine tumors and leukemias, by identifying multiprotein complexes associated with the products of the MEN1 and HRPT2 tumor suppressor genes. In addition, the Meyerson group has pioneered the approach of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array hybridization for discovery of loss-of-heterozygosity and copy number alterations in human cancer samples, and has begun extensive studies of large cancer collections using SNP array analysis. Finally, Dr. Meyerson has developed the approach of sequence-based computational subtraction for the discovery of novel pathogens that cause human disease, and is interested in exploring further collaborations with other ASCI members in this area.