[대학원 생명과학과 세미나 안내]

 

연사 : 노재석 박사 (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)


연제 : Enhancer Deregulation in Cancer Pathogenesis

 

일시 : 2016년 10월 12일 (수) 오후 5시

 

장소 : 하나과학관 A동 207호


초청교수 : 지성욱 교수


Abstract


Enhancers are DNA elements that regulate transcription by recruiting transcription factors and coactivators. The pivotal role of enhancer regulation in cancer pathogenesis has emerged recently, and oncogenic transcription with deregulated enhancer activity often explains how cancer malignancy is initiated and sustained.
In a prior work, the mechanism by which lineage-specific transcription factors coordinately regulate BRD4-dependent transcription in leukemia cells validates the idea that oncogenic transcription is maintained mainly by altered enhancer activity.
Additionally, unexpected observation of active enhancer remodeling triggered by oncogene-induced senescence further highlights that the alteration of enhancer activity is not only restricted to support cancer malignancy, but also has a preventive role in early transformation by facilitating cancer immune surveillance.
From currently ongoing work, utilization of a new pancreatic cancer model has enabled to investigate specific requirements of enhancer deregulation during cancer progression.
Now a progression of pancreatic cancer can be precisely monitored with this newly developed organoids system to address whether epigenetic changes are occurred.
Remarkably, a robust change of enhancer activity was identified at the latest stage of progression, as such metastasis, implicates that enhancer deregulation confers the evolution of metastasis from primary tumor. Now this work is aimed to uncover novel players of metastasis-specific enhancer deregulation, approached by genome-wide analysis of enhancer/transcriptome profiling coupled with CRISPR/Cas9-mediated
genome editing in the organoids system.
By introducing my previous and current works in this seminar, I hope to convince audience that understanding the role of enhancer regulation in cancer is important, and also will guide us to think about a new direction of future cancer therapeutics.