Cancer Stem Cell & Oncology Research

Xu Chen has a Masters of science from the College of St. Scholastica up in Northern Minnesota, USA. She is currently working on her PsyD through University of the Rockies.

Cancer, Cancer in Women, Thyroid Cancer

Dr. Wassil Nowicky, Dipl. Ing., Dr. techn., DDDr. h. c., Director of Nowicky Pharma and President of the Ukrainian Anti-Cancer Institute (Vienna, Austria). Has finished his study at the Radiotechnical Faculty of the Technical University of Lviv (Ukraine) with the end of 1955 with graduation to Diplomingeniueur in 1960 which title was nostrificated in Austria in 1975. Dr. Wassil Nowicky became the very first scientist in the development of the anticancer protonic therapy and is the inventor of the preparation against cancer with a selective effect on basis of celandine alkaloids NSC-631570. He used the factor that cancer cells are more negative charged than normal cells and invented the Celandine alkaloid with a positive charge thanks to which it accumulates in cancer cells very fast. Author of over 300 scientific articles dedicated to cancer research. Dr. Wassil Nowicky is a real member of the New York Academy of Sciences, member of the European Union for applied immunology and of the American Association for scientific progress, honorary doctor of the Janka Kupala University in Hrodno, doctor honoris causa of the Open international university on complex medicine in Colombo, honorary member of the Austrian Society of a name od Albert Schweizer. He has received the award for merits of National guild of pharmasists of America. the award of Austrian Society of sanitary, hygiene and public health services and others.

Dendritic cells are immune cells that act as messengers between the innate and adaptive immunity. Their main functions is to process antigen material and present it on the surface to other cells of the immune system, thus functioning as antigen‐presenting cells and are seen as the most potent population executing this function. In the experiments with the mononuclears from the peripheric blood of healthy persons the effect of the anti-cancer preparation NSC-631570 (Ukraine) on the phenotypic and functional properties of dendritic cells was studied. The most prominent induction of the expression of the cell surface molecules CD86 and HLADR was achieved with NSC-631570 at the lowest and highest concentration, 0.6 μg/mL and 10 μg/mL, respectively. Lipopolysaccharide as standard comparative agent induced similar increase of the cell surface receptors. The proliferation index of the incubated lymphocytes was used as the indicator of the dendritic cells activity. After addition of NSC631570 to the incubated dendritic cells, the lymphocyte proliferation index increased from 22.6% up to 32.30% at 0.6 μg/mL or 29.34% at 10 μg/mL, respectively. These values are similar to the one of 31.82%, i.e. proliferation index achieved at the incubation of lymphocytes with the phytohemagglutinin. The authors concluded dendritic cells incubated with NSC-631570 are strong stimulators of the lymphocyte proliferation. They postulate also NSC-631570 can take an important part in the immune therapy of cancer.

James E. Trosko completed his PhD at the age of 25 years from Michigan State University and spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under Drs. Ernest Chu; Dr. Sheldon Wolff and Dr. Richard Setlow. After joining Michigan State University, he worked with Dr. Barnett Rosenberg on the characterization of the anti-cancer drug, Cis-platin. He obtained an NCI- Career Development award; spent one year at the McArdle Lab for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin under Dr. Van R. Potter. Later he was Chief of Research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation for two years in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. He spent 2 years at Seoul National University as a Korean World Class University Professor. He also spent one year at the ARNAS-Civico-Regional Cancer Hospital in Palermo, Sicily. He is currently an MSU-Distinguished Emeritus Professor. He has published more than 450 papers.

Dr. Trosko's laboratory pioneered in the research on DNA repair in cells of normal humans and those of the skin cancer-prone, xeroderma pigmentosum. He also was the first to discover that epigenetic tumor promoters inhibited gap junctional inter cellular communication. His lab also was the first to isolate human adult organ specific stem cells (kidney-1987; breast 1995). He demonstrated that these human breast stem cells were the target cells for producing breast cancer stem cells. Later he proposed these human organ-specific adult stem cells be used to screen for new drugs and toxicants when grown in 3-dimensional in vitro cultures. Lastly, he has proposed that the mechanism underlying the Barker hypothesis was the increased or decreased number of organ-specific stem cells during early development.

Rusudan Sujashvili, Doctor of Biology, Full Professor, School of Medicine, New Vision University is a Chief scientist and a group leader for Cellular Biophysics at the Department of Biophysics, Iv. Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine. She obtained her Ph.D. degree from Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in 2000. Her projects have been granted from Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation in 2010-2012 and 2016-2019. Goal of her research group is to study the advantages of extracellular ubiquitin in regulation of molecular and cellular pathological changes implemented by genotoxic agents (ionizing radiation, chemo preventive drugs). Rusudan Sujashvili has published about 50 scientific works in recent years.

Advantages of extracellular ubiquitin in regulation of molecular and cellular pathological changes implemented by genotoxic agents (ionizing radiation, chemo preventive drugs)

Irine Ioramashvili MD, Physics, Specialization Biophysics, holds position of a Researcher in a group of Cellular Biophysics at the Department of Biophysics, Iv. Beritashvili Center of Experimental Biomedicine. She obtained her M.Sc degree after graduating from Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in 2002. Participated in research projects granted from CRDF Global, with funding from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in 2015-2016 and Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation in 2016-2019. Irine Ioramashvili has published 12 scientific works in recent years.

Physics, Biophysics, Cellular Biophysics

Dr Sudeep Kumar did his Post Doc in Biotech from Valencia, Spain on purification, cloning and sequencing of Cellulase and Xylanase enzyme. He has more than 20 years of experience in Biopharma. He has worked from R&D to tech transfer and manufacturing of different molecules. He is dealing with different regulatory agencies for approval and faced WHO, USFDA and other regulatory audits. He also actively involved with clinical research team for Preclinical and clinical trials of recombinant proteins and vaccine. He established the VLP technology platform for different vaccine in India in collaboration with Novavax.

Dr Sudeep Kumar has worked from R&D to tech transfer and manufacturing of different molecules. He is dealing with different regulatory agencies for approval and faced WHO, USFDA and other regulatory audits. He also actively involved with clinical research team for Preclinical and clinical trials of recombinant proteins and vaccine. He established the VLP technology platform for different vaccine in India in collaboration with Novavax.

M. A. Alnafea worked, taught, and trained in many local and international hospitals as a medical imaging technologist and a medical physicist. He has completed his PhD at the age of 33 years from the university of Surry, UK and postdoctoral studies from King Saud University. He then worked as Assistance Professor then as director of Radiologic Sciences Dept. for 2 years, He then worked for two years as Vice dean for Academic affair in the College of Applied Medical Sciences. He then worked as consultant at the ministry of higher education, vice ministry for scholarship, medical education department (2011-2015). Sense June 2015 he has being working as an academic and researcher. His Current research projects supported by the National Science, Technology and Innovation Plan (NSTIP) and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology. He is the Principal Investigator and Project Manager and the title of the current project: Development of a proof-of-concept demonstration system for 3D coded aperture Scintimammography.

Breast problems, such as lumps, pain, nipple discharge, and changes in the skin of the breast, and cancer are common in women of all ages, from adolescents to old ages. These considered important health problems that may cause death in women in Saudi Arabia and worldwide. The current and the most cost effective imaging technique used for screening and diagnosis of breast abnormality is X-ray mammography. It is often used for earlier detection, improving both prognosis and survival rate. Despite this, the mortality rate of breast diseases remains high worldwide and a large number of cases with positive mammography results undergo invasive surgical breast biopsies; which are often uncomfortable, stressful. Alternatively, scintimammography (SM) used as a complementary imaging method particularly for women with dense breast. Such imaging technique is generally undertaken using high-resolution parallel-hole collimators with Anger cameras. Unfortunately, this mode of imaging suffers a major drawback in detecting small lesions (less than 1 cm in diameter). These limitations are mainly due to resolution-efficiency trade-off that is inherent in the use of collimation. This study proposes to overcome this limitation by using a simple Coded Aperture (CA) mask, instead of the collimator. In other words, this work focus on development of a proof-of-concept demonstration system for a 3D CA. The promising simulation results and novel image decoding methods that have previously demonstrated. The simulation results showed that lesions as small as 3.0 mm were detectable compared to 8.0 mm with conventional camera. This will represent the first occasion that CA imaging for SM will have to be locally developed and hopefully physically tested under realistic imaging conditions. Given that conventional X-ray mammography exhibits relatively poor sensitivity and specificity for the younger age cohort affected by breast cancer within KSA compared to western populations. This method is ideally suited to the particular health needs of the kingdom. Future work will focus on overcoming the problem of the non-self-holding nature of the mask and further simulation needed to ensure that the addition of a holding material such as aluminium would not destroy the quality of the imaging system. The cutting and the building up of the mask was not straightforward due to a lack of local specialised companies in this field.

Dr. Jing Wang is an INSERM researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Montpellier (France) where she currently leads the team Degeneration and Therapies (http://www.inmfrance.com/inm/hearing/34-2- 2-molecular-basis-of-age-related-hearing-loss). Her work focuses on the study of mechanisms that trigger hearing loss associated with aging, as well as the development of therapies that reverse this loss.

In recent years, with the improvement of cancer survival through more effective treatment, the emphasis has been in trying to minimize the side effects caused by chemo- and radiotherapy, to ensure that patients have the best quality of life throughout their cancer journey. The tumour suppressor p53 is widely implicated in a broad range of cancers. Indeed, p53 is either mutated or inactivated in the majority of cancers. Abundant evidence indicates that toxicity caused by DNA-damaging anticancer therapies in normal tissues is also mainly mediated by p53. p53 accumulates in the cells shortly after anticancer challenges and acts as a nuclear transcription factor that modulates the expression of numerous p53-responsive genes (e.g. p21Waf1, 14-3-3-σ, Mdm2, cyclin G, Bax). This initiates a cascade of events leading to massive programmed cell death in specific normal tissues during the systemic genotoxic stress associated with chemo- and radiotherapies. This makes p53 a target for therapeutic suppression: an approach to reduce side effects associated with treatment of p53-deficient cancers. Here I summarise the role of p53 and the possibilities of its manipulation to improve side effects during active treatment through survivorship.