HGM 2011 - Dubai, UAE
Fahd Al-Mulla - Abstract
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Fahd Al-Mulla
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Metastasis is a leading cause of death from cancer. However, this field remains poorly explored. Our research aims at utilizing what we term 'Functional Fractals' to identify metastasis suppressor genes. In order to understand a complex system that involves a large number ofinteracting components such as cancer metastasis, one needs to determine the type of tissues/data collected, and the technologies/approaches best suited to address cancer heterogeneity and multidimensional signaling pathway perturbations. Current sophisticated technologies paved the way towards our understanding of complex systems and their hierarchical architectural. However, faced with such a magnitude of fragmented data sets composed of hundreds or thousands of genes that are differentially expressed or copy number altered, it remains challenging to identify important players in complex biological or pathological processes such as metastasis. Using functional fractal ideology aided by microarray CGH, we identified a commonly deregulated molecule termed Raf-Kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP) that appears to have an important metastasis suppression characteristic in many cancer types. We show that RKIP may attain such properties by inhibiting several pathways including c-RAF (MAPK), GRK2, NFêB and activating GSK3â. show that RKIP role in cells is more diverse than previously thought. |
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Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum |
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Human Genome Organisation |
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Centre for Arab Genomic Studies |
