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J Med Oncl Ther 2017 Volume 2 | Issue 3
allied
academies
International Conference on
Oncology and Cancer Therapeutics
October 30- November 01, 2017 | Chicago, USA
Chromosomerearrangement isoneof thehallmarksofhuman
malignancies. Recently, we discovered a panel of fusion
genes that are widely present in a variety of human cancers.
One of these fusion genes called MAN2A1-FER has shown
cancer driver activity in multiple malignancies both in animals
and human. Other fusion genes also appear to play critical roles
in the human cancer development. Due to high frequency of
these fusion genes in cancer samples, targeting at these fusion
genes may achieve effective control of human cancers. In this
study, we develop a genome targeting strategy to insert an
artificial gene device into the chromosomal breakpoints of
cancer genome using CRISPR-cas9 genome editing system.
Genome targeting at the chromosomal breakpoint of fusion
genes produced high rate of insertion of suicide gene into the
cancer genome, while had minimal impact on cells that do
not contain the fusion gene breakpoint. Treatment of animals
xenografted with cancer cells containing fusion genes using
this genome targeting approach resulted in partial remission of
the cancers and zero mortality. In contrast, all control animals
quickly succumb to these xenografted cancers. Thus, genomic
targeting may hold promise as an effective treatment for
human cancers.
Speaker Biography
Jianhua Luo has been studying molecular pathology related to human malignancies
from the last 28 years. Currently, he is a Professor of Pathology and Director of High
Throughput Genome Center at University of Pittsburgh. In the last 17 years, he has
been largely focusing on the genetic and molecular mechanism of human prostate and
hepatocellular carcinomas. He is one of the pioneers in utilizing high throughput gene
expression and genome analyses to analyze field effects in prostate cancer and liver
cancer. He is also the first in using methylation array and whole genome methylation
sequencing to analyze prostate cancer. Recently, his group discovered several novel
fusion transcripts and their association with aggressive prostate cancer. Overall, these
findings advance our understanding of how cancer develops and behaves and lay down
the foundation for better future diagnosis and treatment of human malignancies.
e:
Jianhua Luo
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA
Targeting cancer specific fusion genes