Presentation
Organizer: IRB BioMed Seminars
Date: Friday 06 May, 12:00h
Place: Auditorium, PCB
Speaker: Gabriella Ficz, PhD - GL and Senior Lecturer - Centre for Haemato-Oncology - Barts Cancer Institute - a Cancer Research UK Centre of Excellence - Queen Mary - University of London - UK
Title: "When good cells go bad: Piecing together aberrant DNA methylation with experimental reprogramming and epigenetic editing"
Host: Manuel Serrano, PhD
Abstract:
As we age cells accumulate mutations and drift epigenetically. Why and how this happens is unclear, nor are the consequences of this, in particular that of aberrant DNA methylation. We are using epigenetic editing to address the causal relationship between aberrant DNA hypermethylation and physiological consequences in primary human cells. We have previously shown that targeting DNA methylation to p16 locus in healthy human breast cells, as seen in cancer, prevents cells from entering senescence and cells proliferate uninhibited well beyond the Hayflick limit. We are now focusing on human haematopoietic stem cells and AML associated DNA hypermethylation in vitro and in vivo and will show some preliminary data. We have also found that reprogramming human pluripotent stem cells using the NANOG/KLF2 overexpression system induces pan-cancer DNA methylation landscape (aberrant gain of DNA methylation in promoters), as well as global hypomethylation. We suspect that this model system could inform us on what might happen at the interface between normal and cancer and will put forward our model and how our hypotheses might be tested in the future.
IRB BioMed Seminars
IMPORTANT: For attendees outside the PCB community you must register at least 24h before the seminar.
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