IMBECU   20882
INSTITUTO DE MEDICINA Y BIOLOGIA EXPERIMENTAL DE CUYO
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Approaches to explore the molecular biology of cáncer: what can we do in countries with limited resources?
Autor/es:
CIOCCA D. R.; CAYADO-GUTIÉRREZ N.; ZOPPINO F. C. M.; FERNÁNDEZ-MUÑOZ J.; GUERRERO-GIMÉNEZ M. E.; CUELLO CARRIÓN F. D.
Lugar:
Mendoza
Reunión:
Simposio; 24th Latin American Symposium on Biotechnology, Biomedical, Biopharmaceutical, and Industrial Applications of Capillary Electrophoresis and Microchip Technology (LACE 2018); 2018
Institución organizadora:
Latin American Capillary Electrophoresis
Resumen:
The first part of this presentation will be dedicated to the current situation of biomedical sciences in Latin America, presenting a personal view about the difficulties of those of us dedicated to accomplishing scientific research at an international level of excellence. The difficulties are mainly focused on the great economic difference that researchers must cope with as a consequence of low salaries, poor infrastructure of research institutes, and lack of adequate grants. These problems, are in many cases, a direct result of the political and economic instability of the countries of this region of the world. Unfortunately, we are in a kind of a vicious cycle with good times and bad ones. It looks as if the political leaders do not value the importance of scientific research and technological development for the advancement of a country. Governments need to improve the status of science for the sake of the younger generations who want to dedicate their lives to scientific research, and who also represent the intellectual and economic future of their countries. The second part of this presentation will be devoted to summarizing the contributions of our laboratory to the molecular biology of cancer, a topic that we have researched for many years. Advances in the molecular classification of breast cancer based on the transcriptomic expression of heat shock proteins (HSPs) will be presented. Studies have been carried out at a bioinformatics level analyzing thousands of patients from tumor banks: TCGA and METABRIC. This study allowed the recognition of HSP genes not previously associated with breast cancer and/or any cancer type, and for the identification of three clinically relevant clusters based on HSPs expression patterns with influence on overall survival. We will also present data on the levels of these proteins in various tumors, comparing this entire family of 95 HSP genes in 15 solid tumors that are among the most frequent in humans. We will analyze the similarities and differences at the transcriptomic level, the heat map that allowed clustering of the cancer types according to the HSP expression levels, the mutations, and amplifications/deletions. Finally, we will present the advances made in the search for phytochemicals obtained from the Argentina?s Cuyo region (Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis) that have HSPB1 as molecular therapeutic target, demonstrating significant effects on breast, cervical and glioma cancer cells.