Dear All

I would like to invite you for a lecture on 9th of September at 3pm of dr Bartosz Wojtaś from the Laboratory of Sequencing, Center of Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology.

He will present his lecture entitled: "Identification of new prognostic markers and new therapy targets in human malignant gliomas"

His habilitation is processed by the Scientific Council of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology.

Abstract:

Glioblastomas are very complex tumors, characterized by high heterogeneity, invasiveness and increased cell proliferation. Glioblastomas are gliomas of the highest, IV grade of malignancy, according to World Health Organization, WHO. Gliomas of lower grades (II/III) and secondary glioblastomas have very frequent mutations in IDH1 gene. IDH1 mutation causes global DNA and histone methylation, blocking cells in hypermethylated epigenetic state, that deregulates expression of oncogenes and blocks cell differentiation. Due to high level of heterogeneity, immune response evasion and other factors, there are currently no effective therapies available for high grade gliomas, despite decades of intensive translational research, clinical trials and efforts of many research groups all around the world.

International efforts of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) consortium and other consortia revealed the mutational landscape of numerous tumors, including glioblastomas (GBM, WHO grade IV) and lower grade gliomas (LGG, WHO grades II and III). Mutational signatures of aging and DNA repair mechanisms defects were found to be very pronounced in glioblastomas.

One factor that is crucial to understand why gliomas, and glioblastomas in particular are so deadly is that their relapse after surgery is practically inevitable. There is a growing number of studies, for example large GLASS consortium is investigating the molecular trajectory of recurrent tumors. Finding a way to stop or at least slow down recurrence of the tumor is a great challenge in neurooncology.

In my main scientific work that I will present I will focus on finding new ways of classifying glioma tumors, finding new therapeutic targets and exploring their role in gliomagenesis and recurrence by the means of high throughput methods, mainly RNA and DNA sequencing as well as DNA methylation assays.

Link to the meeting: https://zoom.us/j/96708674256?pwd=NlRxalBYY0RkQ3NXaHdMOER0UkVUdz09

Meeting ID: 967 0867 4256
Passcode: 587214

Best regards,
Katarzyna Łukasiuk