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.
# Speaker: Dr. Durjoy Majumder
Title: Development of Algorithm for Automated Diagnosis of
Leukemia : A Systems Biology Application for Preventive Oncology
Abstract: Bone marrow biopsy has become an integral
part of leukemia diagnosis and its treatment. Several advancements are being
made towards the analysis of digital images of biopsy samples. Recently FDA
approved the procedures of digital health. In tune with that digital image
analysis has become propelled. With the advent of high-throughput technologies,
scientific community becomes interested to look into the red blood cells (RBCs)
for early detection of cancer, including leukemia. The reasons are due to their
abundance in peripheral blood and hence, easily accessible compared to bone
marrow biopsy procedure. High magnification and high-resolution electron
microscopy based ultra-structural analysis of RBCs already proved the utility
of the hypothesis about a decade ago. However, in clinical set-up, electron
microscopy based procedures are the major bottleneck in implementation of early
detection of leukemia. Algorithm based computer vision may be suitable to
overcome this limitation. To fill the existing gap a user-friendly MatLab
coding is developed for automated analysis of RBC images. RBC images from both
normal and leukemia were analyzed with the developed code. Each RBC cells were
analyzed individually for each samples of normal and leukemia. So in the output
cellular characteristics namely, radius, perimeter, area, convexity, solidity
were represented in a quantitative manner. Comparison of mean values between
normal and leukemia groups for corresponding variables showed statistical
significance (p<0.05). Thus, the developed code successfully distinguishes
between RBC cells of leukemia and normal. We hope that this RBC based developed
code would be useful in identifying early stage of leukemia in an individual
patient; however, for this ~100 RBC cells are needed to be analyzed. Thus it is
expected that the developed code may play a role in preventive oncology.
Biosketch: Dr. Durjoy
Majumder, Assistant Professor of Physiology, West Bengal State University,
received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Biophysics & Structural Genomics Division of Saha
institute of Nuclear Physics. He gained a multi-/interdisciplinary research
experience by working in science, medical and engineering faculties. He worked
in different tertiary grade medical institutions like School of Tropical
Medicine, Kolkata and Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences,
Lucknow. Before joining to present position he hold a faculty position in engineering
faculty of Institute Indian Institute Engineering Science & Technology,
Shibpur. His research interests include cancer, cancer immunology, cancer
systems biology, systems pharmacology, pre- and post-clinical phases of cancer
management. He has more than 50 research publications in different peer-reviewed
journals, conferences, book chapters and book. He holds positions of editorial
board members in different international journals. In the area of systems
biology, his research group has developed a new philosophical outlook called “Middle-out
Rationalistic Analysis” for cancer systems.
Event Photos:
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Durjoy Majumder, Ph.D.
