Anindya Bagchi
Cancer geneticist and associate professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys who uses chromosome engineering to find cancer genes, known for showing that MYC-amplified cancers depend on the neighbouring gene PVT1
Associate Professor, Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla · University of Minnesota, Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development and Masonic Cancer Center (2014–2017) · Postdoctoral training, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Alea Mills lab · PhD, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
MYC is one of the most important cancer genes, and many tumours carry extra copies of it. Next to MYC on chromosome 8 sits PVT1, a gene long thought to make only non-coding RNA. The 2026 Genes and Development study found that a circular RNA made from PVT1 (circPVT1) actually carries the code for a tiny protein, which the team named Firefox (FFX). Firefox boosts AKT-mTORC1 signalling and cap-dependent translation, the main way cells make proteins, and this keeps MYC protein levels high. When Firefox was removed, MYC levels fell and MYC-amplified tumours grew less in mice carrying human cancer cells (xenografts). It points to an mTORC1-linked weak spot in MYC-driven cancers, shown in cells and mouse models.
Anindya Bagchi is the senior author, the scientist who led the work. The paper builds on a question Bagchi's lab has followed for more than a decade: why does PVT1 travel with MYC? In 2014, from the University of Minnesota, Bagchi's group showed in Nature that cancers with extra copies of MYC also gain PVT1 and need it, because PVT1 keeps MYC protein stable. A 2016 paper showed MYC and PVT1 working together in breast cancer.
Bagchi earned a PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York with Alea Mills. As first author of a 2007 Cell paper, Bagchi used chromosome engineering in mice, adding or deleting a large stretch of DNA matching human chromosome region 1p36, to identify the chromatin regulator CHD5 as a tumour suppressor that works through the p53 pathway.
Bagchi is now an associate professor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys in La Jolla, part of its NCI-designated cancer center. The lab continues to engineer large genome rearrangements to find cancer genes and has discovered small proteins hidden in RNAs thought to be non-coding, including Firefox and, in a companion 2026 paper, Honeybadger, which restrains RAS-MAPK signalling. Bagchi also collaborates on brain tumour and pancreatic cancer studies at the institute.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | Firefox, a protein encoded by circular PVT1, is essential for MYC-driven oncogenesis. TIW2026 Senior author of the study that discovered Firefox, a circPVT1-encoded micropeptide that sustains MYC through AKT-mTORC1 signalling. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Anindya Bagchi.
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- Ashutosh Tiwari Cancer biologist in Anindya Bagchi's lab who found that a tiny protein made from the circular RNA circPVT1 keeps MYC levels high through mTORC1
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