Bradley E. Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D.

Bradley Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D.

Chair of Cancer Biology (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
Richard and Nancy Lubin Family Chair (DFCI)
Professor of Pathology (HMS)
Professor of Cell Biology (HMS)
LC-8313, 450 Brookline Avenue

Bradley Bernstein, M.D., Ph.D. is the Chair of Cancer Biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he holds the Richard and Nancy Lubin Family Chair. He is also the Director of the Gene Regulation Observatory at the Broad Institute, a Professor of Pathology and a Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School, and an Investigator in Harvard’s Ludwig Institute.

Dr. Bernstein’s research focuses on epigenetic gene regulation. The Bernstein Lab studies how gene activity is controlled by noncoding regulatory elements such as ‘enhancers’, and by the way the genes are packaged into chromatin. His work is notable for the discovery of ‘bivalent domains’, a signature chromatin state consisting of opposing histone modifications that poise master genes for alternate fates. His characterization of bivalent chromatin and associated regulatory factors in stem cells was a key early demonstration of the mechanistic impact of chromatin on mammalian development. His subsequent work as a leader of the NIH’s ENCODE consortium revealed that the vast ‘noncoding’ portions of the human genome, which had previously been dismissed as ‘junk’, are in fact packed with sequence elements that control gene activity.

Dr. Bernstein’s second major area of contribution is cancer epigenetics. He showed that DNA methylation can activate oncogenes by disrupting genomic insulators, an entirely unexpected discovery given that methylation had been so closely tied to repression. This finding explains how certain tumors can sustain potent oncogenic signaling in the absence of canonical mutations. His group has also uncovered epigenetic mechanisms that underlie tumor cell self-renewal, drug tolerance and immune evasion.

Dr. Bernstein received his B.S. from Yale University in 1992 and his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1999, before completing a residency in clinical pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and postdoctoral research at Harvard University.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Cancer Biology/LC-8313

450 Brookline Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

Office: 617-632-5160

Programs, origins and immunomodulatory functions of myeloid cells in glioma.
Authors: Authors: Miller TE, El Farran CA, Couturier CP, Chen Z, D'Antonio JP, Verga J, Villanueva MA, Gonzalez Castro LN, Tong YE, Saadi TA, Chiocca AN, Zhang Y, Fischer DS, Heiland DH, Guerriero JL, Petrecca K, Suva ML, Shalek AK, Bernstein BE.
Nature
View full abstract on Pubmed
Publisher Correction: The ENCODE Imputation Challenge: a critical assessment of methods for cross-cell type imputation of epigenomic profiles.
Authors: Authors: Schreiber JM, Boix CA, Wook Lee J, Li H, Guan Y, Chang CC, Chang JC, Hawkins-Hooker A, Schölkopf B, Schweikert G, Carulla MR, Canakoglu A, Guzzo F, Nanni L, Masseroli M, Carman MJ, Pinoli P, Hong C, Yip KY, Spence JP, Batra SS, Song YS, Mahony S, Zhang Z, Tan W, Shen Y, Sun Y, Shi M, Adrian J, Sandstrom RS, Farrell NP, Halow JM, Lee K, Jiang L, Yang X, Epstein CB, Strattan JS, Bernstein BE, Snyder MP, Kellis M, Noble WS, Kundaje AB.
Genome Biol
View full abstract on Pubmed
A multi-modal transformer for cell type-agnostic regulatory predictions.
Authors: Authors: Javed N, Weingarten T, Sehanobish A, Roberts A, Dubey A, Choromanski K, Bernstein BE.
Cell Genom
View full abstract on Pubmed
Multi-locus CRISPRi targeting with a single truncated guide RNA.
Authors: Authors: Moore MM, Wekhande S, Issner R, Collins A, Cruz AJ, Liu YV, Javed N, Casaní-Galdón S, Buenrostro JD, Epstein CB, Mattei E, Doench JG, Bernstein BE, Shoresh N, Najm FJ.
Nat Commun
View full abstract on Pubmed
Evolving cell states and oncogenic drivers during the progression of IDH-mutant gliomas.
Authors: Authors: Wu J, Gonzalez Castro LN, Battaglia S, El Farran CA, D'Antonio JP, Miller TE, Suvà ML, Bernstein BE.
Nat Cancer
View full abstract on Pubmed
An Expanded Registry of Candidate cis-Regulatory Elements for Studying Transcriptional Regulation.
Authors: Authors: Moore JE, Pratt HE, Fan K, Phalke N, Fisher J, Elhajjajy SI, Andrews G, Gao M, Shedd N, Fu Y, Lacadie MC, Meza J, Ganna M, Choudhury E, Swofford R, Farrell NP, Pampari A, Ramalingam V, Reese F, Borsari B, Yu M, Wattenberg E, Ruiz-Romero M, Razavi-Mohseni M, Xu J, Galeev T, Beer MA, Guigó R, Gerstein M, Engreitz J, Ljungman M, Reddy TE, Snyder MP, Epstein CB, Gaskell E, Bernstein BE, Dickel DE, Visel A, Pennacchio LA, Mortazavi A, Kundaje A, Weng Z.
bioRxiv
View full abstract on Pubmed
Helicase-assisted continuous editing for programmable mutagenesis of endogenous genomes.
Authors: Authors: Chen XD, Chen Z, Wythes G, Zhang Y, Orr BC, Sun G, Chao YK, Navarro Torres A, Thao K, Vallurupalli M, Sun J, Borji M, Tkacik E, Chen H, Bernstein BE, Chen F.
Science
View full abstract on Pubmed
An autoimmune transcriptional circuit drives FOXP3+ regulatory T cell dysfunction.
Authors: Authors: Sumida TS, Lincoln MR, He L, Park Y, Ota M, Oguchi A, Son R, Yi A, Stillwell HA, Leissa GA, Fujio K, Murakawa Y, Kulminski AM, Epstein CB, Bernstein BE, Kellis M, Hafler DA.
Sci Transl Med
View full abstract on Pubmed
Systematic decoding of cis gene regulation defines context-dependent control of the multi-gene costimulatory receptor locus in human T cells.
Authors: Authors: Mowery CT, Freimer JW, Chen Z, Casaní-Galdón S, Umhoefer JM, Arce MM, Gjoni K, Daniel B, Sandor K, Gowen BG, Nguyen V, Simeonov DR, Garrido CM, Curie GL, Schmidt R, Steinhart Z, Satpathy AT, Pollard KS, Corn JE, Bernstein BE, Ye CJ, Marson A.
Nat Genet
View full abstract on Pubmed
Dissection of a CTCF topological boundary uncovers principles of enhancer-oncogene regulation.
Authors: Authors: Kim KL, Rahme GJ, Goel VY, El Farran CA, Hansen AS, Bernstein BE.
Mol Cell
View full abstract on Pubmed