报告题目：Targeting Epigenetic Changes in Cancer

报告人：  James Herman, Professor  

Department of Oncology

The Johns Hopkins University  USA

时间：2010年10月18日(星期一)上午10：30

地点：医学部逸夫教学楼409教室

主持人：鲁凤民教授

报告人简介：

James Herman joined the faculty of the Department of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1996 and is currently a Professor in the Division of Cancer Biology. He received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and completed his residency training in internal medicine at Duke University. He completed his clinical training in Medical Oncology at Johns Hopkins. The Herman lab explores the importance and clinical utility of epigenetic changes in cancer. In earlier work, they demonstrated silencing of tumor suppressor genes associated with DNA methylation and developed a simple and sensitive method, methylation- specific PCR, for the detection of methylation changes. It is the most widely used method for the study of methylation changes in cancer. This approach, and others developed in the lab, are now used to identify new genes that are silenced in cancer. The Herman lab also examines methylation events in pre-invasive lesions associated with solid tumors to understand tumor development and progression and to develop these findings into early detection markers, and has recently developed nanotechnology based assays to improve sensitivity. They have also explored the use of gene methylation as predictive and prognostic markers in cancer. Both in the lab and in a phase 1 trial, studies to reverse gene silencing in patients with cancer are being studied.