Society for Systems Biology & Translational Research (SSBTR) is a registered (and also both 12A & 80G certified) not-for-profit scientific society organizes an International Webinar Series Lectures on Translational Systems Biology.
All are cordially invited. For date, time and link and other details as below:
GOOGLE MEET Link: url (https://meet.google.com/qjb-utgp-ymk)
# Speaker: Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern
Title: Diagnosis of Glioma Tumors Using Circulating Cell-Free DNA
Abstract: Gliomas are the most frequent brain tumors, making up about
30% of all brain and central nervous system tumors, and 80% of all malignant
brain tumors. Diagnosis of different glioma tumor types and their tumor grade
is an essential step to suggest a right treatment for the glioma patients.
Existing standard diagnostic technique for glioma tumor includes tissue biopsy,
which is a highly invasive and hence a risky technique for the patient’s survival.
‘Liquid biopsy’ is a new and recently developed non-invasive cancer diagnostic
technique. This technique includes collection of blood or urine samples and
diagnosis of cancer based on analyzing molecular bits or cancer cells that are
released from tumor tissue into the blood or urine system. Circulating
cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments is one those molecular bits that are released
into the bloodstream after rapid apoptosis or necrosis of the tumor cells in
the cancer patients. Our goal is to do comprehensive
study between distinct types of glioma cancer tumors and cfDNA of the
respective patients, to elucidate the scope of cfDNA in liquid biopsy technique
for glioma diagnosis. We have successfully detected glioma specific mutations
such as IDH1, IDH2, PDGFRA, NOTCH1, PIK3R1 and TP53, from cfDNA
isolated from the plasma of glioma patients and could relate these mutations to
the different tumor grades of glioma. Moreover, we have identified unique
gene-gene fusions that provide a personalized drug response to glioma treatment.
Our study may help in developing liquid biopsy technique for glioma tumor
diagnosis and in its prognosis for monitoring the glioma treatment by
non-invasive approach, and will eventually help physicians to decide on the
right treatment while bypassing the existing ''wait-and-see' approach of
treatment monitoring.
Biosketch: Dr. Milana Frenkel-Morgenstern, Senior Lecturer and Head of Cancer Genomics and Bio-computing of Complex Diseases, Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University. She has completed her Ph.D in the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel in 2006. She made her first postdoc in the lab of Prof. Uri Alon in Systems Biology in the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and the second postdoc in the lab of Prof. Alfonso Valencia in the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), Spain. She has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals and serving as an editorial board member of repute. She is a founder of special scientific Art in Science competition at the international Bioinformatics conferences since 2008, a chair of the ISCB affiliated Israeli Bioinformatics group. Her group has developed unique protocols for the cell free DNA isolation and its analysis using unique and patented techniques, the group in working in evolution of protein interaction networks.
