Systems Biology of Cellular Response and Resistance to Targeted Cancer Therapies

Friday, October 3, 2014

4:00 PM-5:30 PM

Dr. Anil Korkut, postdoctoral research scholar at the Computational Biology Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, will discuss how targeted cancer therapies are a powerful and increasingly effective alternative to standard chemotherapy, particularly in some cancers such as melanoma (RAF inhibitor) and prostate cancer (AR inhibitor). For almost all single agent targeted therapies, however, drug resistance eventually emerges leading to rapid progression of metastatic disease. The ultimate goal of Dr. Korkut and his team is to provide a generalized solution to the drug resistance problem in cancer. For this purpose, he and his team are using a set of experimental/computational methods, which they developed in their laboratory. The methods involve i. Data-driven network modeling of signaling pathways to systematically predict cellular response to combinatorial perturbations, ii. Statistical and pathway analyses of differential drug response (genomic, proteomic and cellular) in drug resistant and sensitive tumor samples. Using these methods, Dr. Korkut and his team aim to nominate novel combinatorial perturbation strategies and block multiple escape routes in drug resistant cancer cells. The most promising drug combinations are experimentally tested and validated using standard cell biology techniques. For more info, please visit www.biomed.drexel.edu.

Contact Information

Banu Onaral
215-895-2247
banu.onaral@drexel.edu