Jianhua Luo
Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA
Title: Genomic Drivers of Human Cancers: Diagnostics, Prognostics and therapeutics
Biography
Biography: Jianhua Luo
Abstract
Accurate prediction of clinical courses of human cancers remains elusive. In recent studies, we performed whole genome analysis on prostate and liver cancers. Our result showed that combination of genome copy number variance and novel fusion transcripts specific for cancer achieved high accuracy in predicting clinical outcomes of these cancers. Interestingly, some of these fusion genes are also present in a variety of human malignancies. Some of these fusion gene products trigger new pathways that are essential for carcinogenesis in multiple human cancers, and create novel functions that are not present in wild type gene counterparts. Treatment of cancers with drugs specific for fusion genes and their signaling pathways produced dramatic improvement of metastasis and survival rate of animals xenografted with cancers positive for these fusion genes. Our analyses suggest that targeting therapy for fusion genes holds promise as an effective treatment for human cancers.