We’re bringing together leaders in cancer research.
Speaker
Rugang Zhang, PhD
John M. O’Quinn Endowed Chair in Cancer Research
Associate Director for Discovery Science
Department Chair & Professor, Department of Experimental Therapeutics
Faculty, UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
“Exploiting Epigenetic Vulnerabilities to Enable Senescence-based Therapeutic Strategies in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer”
The past decade has brought unprecedented progress in understanding the genetics of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), but cures remain elusive due to the lack of insights into mechanisms that can be leveraged to develop new therapies. EOC is genetically heterogeneous and, therefore, it is imperative that therapeutic strategies become personalized by targeting distinct molecular subsets of EOC. Despite the importance of epigenetic regulators in EOC is increasingly recognized, the mechanism of action for these epigenetic regulators and the associated vulnerabilities exposed by their dysregulations have remained elusive for most of them. In this talk, we will present our recent work elucidating how specific epigenetic mechanisms can be exploited to induce therapy-driven senescence. We will further discuss how senescent tumor states can be exploited through rational combination strategies, including immunotherapy. Together, these integrated approaches offer new opportunities to address unmet clinical needs in genetically defined subsets of EOC.