A lecture by Prof. Alexey Terskikh "Signature of Glioblastoma Differentiation Revealed by Imaging of Epigenetic Landscapes” - April 20

Dr. Alexey Terskikh

Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (USA)

https://www.sbpdiscovery.org/team/alexey-terskikh-phd

Signature of Glioblastoma Differentiation Revealed by Imaging of Epigenetic Landscapes

The resistance of glioblastoma multiform (GBM) to conventional cytotoxic drugs has prompted novel therapeutic strategies, including differentiating tumor propagating cells (TPCs) into less tumorigenic cells using small molecule inducers of TPC differentiation. However, high-throughput screening for such molecules is hampered by the lack of robust markers of GBM differentiation. To obtain a signature of differentiated TPCs, we developed “Microscopic Imaging of Epigenetic Landscapes” (MIEL), which captures patterns of nuclear staining for epigenetic marks to derive feature-fingerprints of individual cells. We confirmed MIEL’s ability to accurately distinguish multiple cell fates and we identified a multiparametric epigenetic signature of differentiated TPCs and validated, using global gene expression, MIEL’s ability to select and prioritize small molecules, which direct TPC towards differentiation. 

april 6, 2018