Hirendra Banerjee
University of North Carolina, USA
Title: An investigation in the role of noncoding RNA’s in epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) in prostate cancer
Biography
Biography: Hirendra Banerjee
Abstract
The recurrence and the metastasis of prostate cancer PCa are tightly linked with the biology of prostate cancer stem cells or cancer-initiating cells that is reminiscent of the acquisition of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) phenotype. Increasing evidence suggests that EMT-type cells share many biological characteristics with cancer stem-like cells (CSCs). In earlier studies it has been shown that there are certain genes and miRNA that are involved in this process. The genes and the miRNA have altered functionality causing this problem. We collected several prostate cancer samples from African American (AA) and Caucasian (CA) patients from Karmanos Cancer Center, Detroit, MI and compared the differential expression of those previously mentioned CSC
related miRNA in these samples searching for biomarkers with clinicopathological variables, including race (AA vs. CA), to develop a clinically relevant algorithm for PCa aggressiveness. We identified that the over expression of genes Lin28B and EZH2 leads to the acquisition of the invasive characteristics of the Pca cells with EMT phenotype due to down regulation of miR200 and let7c, there by maintaining the stem cell like characteristics in PCa which in turn causes more aggressive PCa in AA than CA along with up regulation of the PRC2 (polycomb) protein complex expression. Work proposed in this application, will contribute to development of a novel theranostics approach involving the noncoding RNA’s that may translate into an effective treatment regimen against not only PCa but other cancers as well.