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 Niches of Immunomodulatory Myeloid Cells in Gliomas.
Authors: Authors: Miller TE, El Farran CA, Couturier CP, Chen Z, D'Antonio JP, Verga J, Villanueva MA, Castro LNG, Tong YE, Saadi TA, Chiocca AN, Fischer DS, Heiland DH, Guerriero JL, Petrecca K, Suva ML, Shalek AK, Bernstein BE.
bioRxiv
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Modeling epigenetic lesions that cause gliomas.
Authors: Authors: Rahme GJ, Javed NM, Puorro KL, Xin S, Hovestadt V, Johnstone SE, Bernstein BE.
Cell
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Exposure of iPSC-derived human microglia to brain substrates enables the generation and manipulation of diverse transcriptional states in vitro.
Authors: Authors: Dolan MJ, Therrien M, Jereb S, Kamath T, Gazestani V, Atkeson T, Marsh SE, Goeva A, Lojek NM, Murphy S, White CM, Joung J, Liu B, Limone F, Eggan K, Hacohen N, Bernstein BE, Glass CK, Leinonen V, Blurton-Jones M, Zhang F, Epstein CB, Macosko EZ, Stevens B.
Nat Immunol
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Impact of supraphysiologic MDM2 expression on chromatin networks and therapeutic responses in sarcoma.
Authors: Authors: Bevill SM, Casaní-Galdón S, El Farran CA, Cytrynbaum EG, Macias KA, Oldeman SE, Oliveira KJ, Moore MM, Hegazi E, Adriaens C, Najm FJ, Demetri GD, Cohen S, Mullen JT, Riggi N, Johnstone SE, Bernstein BE.
Cell Genom
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Integrative dissection of gene regulatory elements at base resolution.
Authors: Authors: Chen Z, Javed N, Moore M, Wu J, Sun G, Vinyard M, Collins A, Pinello L, Najm FJ, Bernstein BE.
Cell Genom
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Ultraviolet radiation shapes dendritic cell leukaemia transformation in the skin.
Authors: Authors: Griffin GK, Booth CAG, Togami K, Chung SS, Ssozi D, Verga JA, Bouyssou JM, Lee YS, Shanmugam V, Hornick JL, LeBoeuf NR, Morgan EA, Bernstein BE, Hovestadt V, van Galen P, Lane AA.
Nature
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The ENCODE Imputation Challenge: a critical assessment of methods for cross-cell type imputation of epigenomic profiles.
Authors: Authors: Schreiber J, Boix C, 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 R, Farrell N, Halow J, Lee K, Jiang L, Yang X, Epstein C, Strattan JS, Bernstein B, Snyder M, Kellis M, Stafford W, Kundaje A.
Genome Biol
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The EN-TEx resource of multi-tissue personal epigenomes & variant-impact models.
Authors: Authors: Rozowsky J, Gao J, Borsari B, Yang YT, Galeev T, Gürsoy G, Epstein CB, Xiong K, Xu J, Li T, Liu J, Yu K, Berthel A, Chen Z, Navarro F, Sun MS, Wright J, Chang J, Cameron CJF, Shoresh N, Gaskell E, Drenkow J, Adrian J, Aganezov S, Aguet F, Balderrama-Gutierrez G, Banskota S, Corona GB, Chee S, Chhetri SB, Cortez Martins GC, Danyko C, Davis CA, Farid D, Farrell NP, Gabdank I, Gofin Y, Gorkin DU, Gu M, Hecht V, Hitz BC, Issner R, Jiang Y, Kirsche M, Kong X, Lam BR, Li S, Li B, Li X, Lin KZ, Luo R, Mackiewicz M, Meng R, Moore JE, Mudge J, Nelson N, Nusbaum C, Popov I, Pratt HE, Qiu Y, Ramakrishnan S, Raymond J, Salichos L, Scavelli A, Schreiber JM, Sedlazeck FJ, See LH, Sherman RM, Shi X, Shi M, Sloan CA, Strattan JS, Tan Z, Tanaka FY, Vlasova A, Wang J, Werner J, Williams B, Xu M, Yan C, Yu L, Zaleski C, Zhang J, Ardlie K, Cherry JM, Mendenhall EM, Noble WS, Weng Z, Levine ME, Dobin A, Wold B, Mortazavi A, Ren B, Gillis J, Myers RM, Snyder MP, Choudhary J, Milosavljevic A, Schatz MC, Bernstein BE, Guigó R, Gingeras TR, Gerstein M.
Cell
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Chromatin complex dependencies reveal targeting opportunities in leukemia.
Authors: Authors: Najm FJ, DeWeirdt P, Moore MM, Bevill SM, El Farran CA, Macias KA, Hegde M, Waterbury AL, Liau BB, van Galen P, Doench JG, Bernstein BE.
Nat Commun
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Epigenetic clocks, aging, and cancer.
Authors: Authors: Johnstone SE, Gladyshev VN, Aryee MJ, Bernstein BE.
Science
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