Tag Archives: singapore

Advances in nanotechnology’s fight against cancer

A new research review co-authored by a UCLA professor provides one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of research on nanomedicine-based approaches to treating cancer and offers insight into how researchers can best position nanomedicine-based cancer treatments for FDA approval. …

Potential new treatments for acute myeloid leukemia

Both research teams, comprising international scientists from Singapore, United States, Austria, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Sweden and the Czech Republic, were led by Professor Daniel Tenen, Director, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Breakthrough study validates Sox4 as potential therapeutic target In this breakthrough study, the researchers discovered, for the first time, a molecular target for CEBPA mutations by demonstrating that targeting Sox4 effectively perturbs the major leukemogenic phenotypes in human patient samples of mutated CEBPA AML. These findings were first published in the leading scientific journal Cancer Cell on 11 November 2013. …

Scientists expose molecular secrets of bile duct cancers from different countries

The team’s findings may lead to new cholangiocarcinoma treatments, and have shed light on some of the oldest questions in cancer research. The group is also affiliated with the Genome Institute of Singapore and the Cancer Science Institute in Singapore. This work was published online in the scientific journal Nature Genetics. Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), is a cancer involving uncontrolled growth of the bile ducts, the part of the liver that drains bile into the intestine…

After almost a century, a question answered; genes protect themselves against being silenced

As explicated today in the journal Nature, methylation in fact enforces gene silencing, and it is levels of a newly identified form of RNA produced by individual genes that determines whether they are turned off by the addition of a methyl (CH3) group by the enzyme DNA methylase 1 (DNMT1). The study, led by HSCI Principal Faculty member Daniel Tenen, MD, found that during transcription of DNA to RNA, a gene produces a small amount of what the investigators named "extracoding RNA," which stays in the nucleus and binds to DNMT1, blocking its ability to methylate, or silence the gene. The discovery of RNA’s new function has therapeutic potential as an on-off switch for gene expression…

Novel way discovered to ‘switch on’ tumor suppressors that have been silenced

The research group, led by Professor Daniel Tenen, Director of CSI Singapore, demonstrated for first time that RNA interacts with an enzyme essential for DNA methylation, known as DNA methyl transferase 1 (DNMT1), offering strategies for the treatment of diseases such as cancer. In this study, the researchers focused on a new class of RNAs, which is critical in regulating DNA methylation. …

‘Undruggable’ cancer may be druggable after all: New target identified

The gene, SALL4, gives stem cells their ability to continue dividing as stem cells rather than becoming mature cells. Typically, cells only express SALL4 during embryonic development, but the gene is re-expressed in nearly all cases of acute myeloid leukemia and 10 to 30 percent of liver, lung, gastric, ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancers, strongly suggesting it plays a role in tumor formation. In work published in the New England Journal of Medicine, two HSCI-affiliated labs — one in Singapore and the other in Boston — show that knocking out the SALL4 gene in mouse liver tumors, or interfering with the activity of its protein product with a small inhibitor, treats the cancer. "Our paper is about liver cancer, but it is likely true about lung cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, many, many cancers," said HSCI Blood Diseases Program leader Daniel Tenen, who also heads a laboratory at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore)…