June 10, 2026
In two new articles published in Nature journals, Ashok Kumar, Else and Philip Hargrove Endowed Professor of Drug Discovery at UHCOP and director of the Institute of Muscle Biology and Cachexia, explains how TAK1, a protein inside RMS cells, helps rhabdomyosarcoma tumors grow. His research also found that tumor cells rely on the IRE1α-XBP1 cellular stress-response pathway to survive. Blocking either TAK1 or IRE1α-XBP1 slowed tumor growth and helped cancer cells develop into normal muscle cells.