Keynote Talk - Translational Potential of Non-coding RNAs in Oncology

Abstract:

For many years, the central dogma of molecular biology has been that RNA functions mainly as an informational intermediate between DNA sequence and its encoded protein. One of the great surprises of modern biology was the discovery that protein-coding genes represent less than 2% of the total genome sequence, and subsequently that almost 90% of the human genome is actively transcribed. Thus, human transcriptome was found to be more complex than a collection of protein-coding gene transcripts and their splice variants. Recent evidence has clearly shown that non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play major biological roles in cellular development, physiology and pathologies. ncRNAs are grouped into two major classes based on transcript size; small ncRNAs and long ncRNAs. Each of these classes can be further divided, whereas novel subclasses are still being discovered and characterized. In the last ten years, class of small ncRNAs called microRNAs was studied most intensively with more than fifty thousand hits at PubMed database. A huge amount of evidence has been accumulated to describe molecular mechanisms of novel RNA species functioning, providing insight into their functional roles in cellular biology and in human disease, especially in cancer. Knowledge regarding ncRNAs functioning in cancer biology and their translational potential to serve as disease biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets in cancer will be summarized and demonstrated on several examples based on our recent observations.

Speaker Biography:

Ondrej Slaby is a Professor of Medical Biochemistry at the 1st Faculty of Medicine at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He works as Research Group Leader at the Department of Molecular Medicine, Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC), Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic) and as a Scientific Secretary at the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno. Prof. Slaby has published extensively in the field of non-coding RNAs and solid cancer with special focus on their translational potential in diagnostics and as the therapeutic targets (h-index 31, Sum of the times cited without auto-citations > 3500. Since 2018, prof. Slaby is a chair of Czechoslovak Biological Society. In 2010 and 2012 received Award of Czech Society for Oncology, in 2016 an Award of Czech Medical Society and 2014 and 2016 Award for Medical Research of Czech Minister of Health, Novartis Discovery Award 2017.

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Past Conference Report - Cancer Research

With great support from our Collaborators and Organizing Committee, PULSUS Conferences successfully completed the “Cancer 2018” which was held at Edinburgh, Scotland on March 26-27, 2018. We would like to thank our Keynote Speakers for the conference - Hiroshi Kobayashi , Chiba University, Japan, William T. Beck , University of Illinois, USA, Shalini Gupta , King George Medical College, India, Antonio Gomez-Munoz , University Of The Basque Country, Spain, Barbara DeVivo , Westmont University, USA. for their support in making this event a great success. We would like to extend our thanks to our collaborators “ Sudanese Medical Research Association ”, “ Uganda Cancer Society ” and “ Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda ” for their constant support. It wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our Media Partners who helped us in promoting this event. We thank our Media partners for their support in helping us reach a greater audience. We also would like to thank all o...

Poster Presentation - The Immunogradient of CD8+ cell density in the tumour-stroma interface zone predicts overall survival of patients with hormone receptor-positive invasive ductal breast carcinoma

Abstract Statement of the Problem: Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) are associated with better prognosis in triple-negative and HER2-positive breast cancer (1, 2), and TIL assessment by digital image analysis (DIA) has been successfully implemented in colorectal and other cancers (3). However, results in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer (HRBC) based on manual scoring remain contradictory (2). Here we used an automated DIA method to extract the prognostic value of novel Immunogradient indicators in CD8+ cell density profiles in HRBC. Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: Surgically excised HRBC samples from 102 patients were immunohistochemically stained for CD8, digitized and analyzed by the HALO™ platform. The DIA data were subsampled by a hexagonal grid and explicit rules were then used to extract the tumor-stroma interface zone (IZ) and compute novel Immunogradient indicators from TIL density profiles across the IZ. The prognostic value was evaluated by sur...

Poster Presentation - Influence of NECC (Nutrition and Exercise Center for Cancer Patients) on survival and body composition in Gastrointestinal Cancer Patients

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25th Global Meet on Cancer Research & Oncology

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