It has to decide whether to turn around and stay in the same odor, or whether to cross the midline and try something new.

Axon Guidance In the development of the central nervous system, the decision of a neuron to cross or not cross the midline is critical.

It has to decide whether to turn around and stay in the same odor, or whether to cross the midline and try something new.

If you deviate too much in the parameters that are close to the midline of that life permitting survival range, you go into disease or death.

If you deviate too much in the parameters that are close to the midline of that life permitting survival range, you go into disease or death.

And so, please consider this a work in progress, but I'd like to tell you today a story about a very rare cancer called midline carcinoma, about the undruggable protein target that causes this cancer, called BRD4, and about a molecule developed at my lab at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, called JQ1, which we affectionately named for Jun Qi, the chemist that made this molecule.

So in my lab, we bring adolescents and adults into the lab to have a brain scan, we give them some kind of task that involves thinking about other people, their minds, their mental states, their emotions, and one of the findings that we've found several times now, as have other labs around the world, is part of the prefrontal cortex called medial prefrontal cortex, which is shown in blue on the slide, and it's right in the middle of prefrontal cortex in the midline of your head.