William Feng, PhD

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Dr. Feng is presenting his work at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Seoul, South Korea on Sept. 13, 2026. Session info

About the research

mSWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes act as an on/off switch for genes cancer cells depend on for survival. The primary goal of this project is to evaluate whether blocking mSWI/SNF is effective for treating KRAS-mutant lung cancer, particularly when resistance to KRAS inhibitors develops. The team is working to decipher the specific genes controlled by mSWI/SNF to help understand why lung cancer cells rely on mSWI/SNF to survive. Several mSWI/SNF inhibitors are currently in human clinical trials – so the team is evaluating the impact of these inhibitors as an approach to treating KRAS-mutant lung cancer.

Exciting findings so far

  • The most exciting thing so far is that regardless of the specific genetic mutation in the KRAS gene that lung cancer cells carry, inhibiting mSWI/SNF makes existing drugs more potent and effective for longer periods of time.
  • The team has found that mSWI/SNF cooperates with AP-1 complexes to control gene expression in cancer cells, and that inhibiting AP-1 has a similar effect to inhibiting mSWI/SNF when it comes to making cells more responsive to drug treatment and preventing development of drug resistance.

What’s next

  • Because of the unexpected finding that the mSWI/SNF complex is necessary for AP-1 to be fully functional in KRAS-mutant lung cancer, and drugs have been developed to target mSWI/SNF (but not AP-1), the team is developing a first-in-class AP-1 specific inhibitor as an innovative alternative approach to treat lung cancer.
  • In EGFR-mutant lung cancer, mSWI/SNF works in tandem with AP-1 in a similar way and inhibiting either mSWI/SNF or AP-1 can reverse resistance against the EGFR inhibitor, osimertinib. The work from this project has highlighted this across multiple subtypes of lung cancer and more research is needed to determine if these findings can be applied more broadly across other subtypes of lung cancer, such as ALK, MET, and HER2-mutant lung cancers.

Important to know

  • LCRF supporters play a pivotal role in not only funding important lung cancer research, but in educating others about the progress that researchers are making and how critical financial support is for this progress to continue.
  • Dr. Feng has recently received a departmental grant as follow-on funding, crediting this LCRF award in helping generate strong preliminary data.
Grant description