Project description:Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality and is classified by the World Health Organization into two broad histological subtypes. Non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and large cell carcinoma, accounts for ~85% of all lung cancer cases, with the remaining 15% of cases being due to small cell lung cancer (SCLC), which arises from neuroendocrine cells in the lung. Although most SCLC tumors are initially responsive to chemotherapy and radiation, patients often experience relapse, with the tumor acquiring an aggressiveness and therapeutic resistance that lead to a poor clinical outcome. Improvement of overall survival in individuals with SCLC will require the identification of novel therapeutic targets based on a better understanding of the changes in intracellular signaling of aggressive SCLC cells. The malignant progression of SCLC often occurs concomitantly with the acquisition of chemoresistance, suggesting that phenotypic malignant change is related to adaptation to the stresses induced by chemotherapy. In order to analyze gene expression changes associated with malignant transformation in SCLC, we established a cisplatin-resistant SCLC cell line and performed RNA sequencing.
Project description:Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality and is classified by the World Health Organization into two broad histological subtypes. Non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and large cell carcinoma, accounts for ~85% of all lung cancer cases, with the remaining 15% of cases being due to small cell lung cancer (SCLC), which arises from neuroendocrine cells in the lung. Although most SCLC tumors are initially responsive to chemotherapy and radiation, patients often experience relapse, with the tumor acquiring an aggressiveness and therapeutic resistance that lead to a poor clinical outcome. Improvement of overall survival in individuals with SCLC will require the identification of novel therapeutic targets based on a better understanding of the changes in intracellular signaling of aggressive SCLC cells. The malignant progression of SCLC often occurs concomitantly with the acquisition of chemoresistance, suggesting that phenotypic malignant change is related to adaptation to the stresses induced by chemotherapy. In order to analyze gene expression changes associated with malignant transformation in SCLC, we established a cisplatin-resistant SCLC cell line and performed RNA sequencing.
Project description:Malignant transformation of SCLC often occurs simultaneously with the acquisition of chemotherapy resistance, suggesting that phenotypic malignant transformation is associated with adaptation to chemotherapy-induced stress. Recently, it has been reported that autophagy deficiency is involved in chemotherapy resistance in SCLC. To analyze gene expression changes associated with SCLC malignant transformation, we established ATG7 knockout and ATG7/SQSTM1 double knockout SCLC cell lines and performed RNA sequencing.
Project description:Drugs that target pre-mRNA splicing hold great therapeutic potential, but the mechanistic understanding of how these drugs function is limited. Here we introduce a biophysical modeling framework that can quantitatively describe the sequence-specific and concentration-dependent behavior of splice-modifying drugs. Using massively parallel splicing assays, RNA-seq experiments, and precision dose-response curves, we apply this framework to two drugs, risdiplam and branaplam, developed for treating spinal muscular atrophy. The results quantitatively define the specificities of risdiplam and branaplam for 5’ splice site sequences, suggest that branaplam recognizes 5’ splice sites via two distinct interaction modes, and disprove the prevailing two-site hypothesis for risdiplam activity at SMN2 exon 7. The results also show, more generally, that single-drug cooperativity and multi-drug synergy are widespread among splice-modifying drugs. Our biophysical modeling approach thus clarifies the mechanisms of existing splice-modifying treatments and provides a quantitative basis for the rational development of new therapies.
Project description:We developed Reactivity-Based RNA Profiling (RBRP) approach to determine the off-target transcriptome interactions of small molecule drugs. Deep sequencing was used to locate and quantify drug-promoted acylation of RNA 2´-hydroxyl groups as a proxy of RNA-drug interaction in HEK293.