Issue 01  | Spring 2017
Program Newsletter
for  Basic and Clinical Research 
We are pleased to distribute the inaugural newsletter for the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey’s Basic Research and Clinical Research Programs. This newsletter will keep you informed of our researchers’ awards, publications, presentations, and other matters of programmatic importance on a quarterly basis.

For our first edition, we have included accomplishments of our Research Program Members since the Fall of 2016.
Shared Resources at Rutgers Cancer Institute 

Featured Resource:

The Genome Editing Core Facility
Formerly the Transgenic KO Mouse Core Facility, the Genome Editing Core Facility (GECF) was launched in April 2016 under the new leadership of Peter Romanienko, PhD. Dr. Romanienko came from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with a strong background in using CRISPR/Cas9 to generate genetically engineered mouse models. To date, the GECF has successfully generated a number of mouse models and continues to work to adapt this technology to the needs of Rutgers and Rutgers Cancer Institute investigators. In addition, the GECF provides traditional services geared to the production and preservation of GEMMs and plans to begin genome editing in cell lines in 2017. The ability to specifically edit a genome at the nucleotide level allows for the development of highly specific animal and cell based models that can lead to better insights into human disease and treatment.
 
Email the facility at  [email protected] to request their services.
Fast Facts on the Genome Editing Core Facility
IMPORTANT UPDATE: NEW PROCESS TO OBTAIN TISSUE FROM THE BIOSPECIMEN REPOSITORY SERVICE (BRS)

 1. Visit http://www.cinj.org/research/biospecimen-repository-service to obtain an “Application for De-Identified Tissue and Data Use in IRB Approved Research” form. 

 

2. Return the form to Diane Hanrahan ([email protected]), administrator of the Honest Broker program. The form will then be reviewed by BRS in consultation with the PI, and it will be determined what tissue/data is available to meet the PI’s needs.

 

3. The PI* should contact Rutgers Cancer Institute’s Office of Human Research Services (OHRS) (contact: Celeste Jackson, [email protected]) Depending on whether the PI requests tissue and/or tissue plus data, they will be given an appropriate “Protocol Template”. OHRS will then work with the PI to complete the Protocol, at which point OHRS will process the form and arrange for an accelerated administrative review by the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey’s Scientific Review Board (SRB).

 

4. After SRB review, OHRS will work with the PI to submit the protocol and any added requirements to the IRB for what would be expected to be an expedited review.

 

* If the PI of the study is not a Rutgers University faculty member, then the PI would work with her/his Rutgers Cancer Institute Scientific Program leader to identify a collaborator that would become the PI on the SRB/IRB applications, as this is required.  The non-Rutgers PI would be a Co-PI on the SRB/IRB submission. Also, if the studies are to be done by a non-Rutgers PI, the IRB of the other academic institution must first give approval. For example, a Princeton University PI would be required to get approval of the study from the Princeton University IRB prior to submitting for Rutgers University IRB approval. The OHRS will work with the PI to facilitate this process.

 

BRS Contact Information:  

Julie Arnsdorff, Program Director, Biospecimen Repository Service

Phone: 732-235-8065  

Email: [email protected] 


Location:

Rutgers Cancer Institute

195 Little Albany Street

Rooms 2031, 2034 and 2035

New Brunswick, NJ 08903

Upcoming Conferences & Retreats

Neuroendocrine Tumor Symposium

Wednesday, May 10, 2017
10:30 am - 5:30 pm

Bloomberg Lecture Hall, Institute for Advanced Study
1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540

 
SPEAKERS:

Shelley L. Berger, PhD
University of Pennsylvania

Chris R. Harris, PhD
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey

Diane Reidy-Lagunes, MD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Eric Rubin, MD
Merck Research Laboratories

Edward M. Wolin, MD
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care

Registration is required for this event, and the deadline is April 26, 2017. If you would like to attend the Neuroendocrine Tumor Symposium, please register online at www.sns.ias.edu/csb/events/Neuroendocrine_Tumor_Symposium

The 2017 Annual Retreat on Cancer Research in New Jersey
Thursday, May 25, 2017
8:00 am - 5:00 pm

College Avenue Student Center, Rutgers University
126 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Lewis C. Cantley, PhD
Meyer Director, Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center
Professor of Cancer Biology in Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine 
Deputy Director and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Eileen White is pleased to host Dr. Cantley at this Annual Retreat.

To register, go to  www.njcancerretreat.org . Registration closes on May 12, 2017. 
Recent Conferences & Retreats
Press Conference and Visit with Senator Robert Menendez

Senator Robert Menendez visited Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey on April 12, 2017 to learn about the important work being done here, as well as to discuss the impact of proposed budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health and scientific research. Read more about his visit here
Director Steven Libutti, MD, FACS with
Senator Menendez.
Eileen White, PhD and Janice Mehnert, MD with Senator Menendez. 
 
2017 Cancer Genomics Retreat
On March 13, 2017, Eileen White, PhD and Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD hosted a Cancer Genomics Retreat at Princeton University. The event began with a “ Welcome & Introduction” in which Dr. White discussed the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB) and relevant Rutgers Cancer Institute Shared Resources such as the Biospecimen Repository, Functional Genomics Core Facility, and Genome Editing Core Facility. Dr. Ganesan followed Dr. White’s resource overview with a description of the molecular characterization of patient tumors in Precision Medicine, and how treatment decisions are     2017 Cancer Genomics Retreat Speakers
made in the Molecular Tumor Board.                               (Dr. Troyanskaya not pictured)

Dr. Ganesan kicked off the retreat with his presentation “ Aiming Targeted Therapy: Precision Oncology in The Clinic”, in which he presented specific examples of how patients on protocol for molecular tumor characterization were guided to targeted therapy, how response and relapse was monitored molecularly and used to adjust treatment in response to tumor evolution. Other featured speakers included:  Olga Troyanskaya, PhD, Michael L. Gatza, PhD, Jeffrey A. Rosenfeld, PhD, Hossein Khiabanian, PhD, Barbara Engelhardt, PhD, Subhajyoti De, PhD, Mona Singh, PhD, Chang S. Chan, PhD, Benjamin Raphael, PhD, and Mike Levine, PhD. For highlights from their presentations, see the Clinical Investigations & Precision Therapeutics and Genome Instability & Cancer Genetics sections of this newsletter.
  
The retreat was well attended by individuals from both Rutgers University and Princeton University. Attendees and speakers had ample time for interaction and discussion, and it was clear from their presentations and discussions that they had many common interests and opportunities for synergy. Following this retreat, a RFA was released to support pilot awards for new transformative, collaborative cancer genomics projects. There are also plans for the speakers to identify a small number of important scientific questions of shared interest for the group, or a subgroup, to collectively address.  

Cancer Metabolism & Growth
Meet Our New Members!
Awards and Honors

Justin M. Drake, PhD was awarded a New Jersey Health Foundation Grant, entitled "Functional Assessment of a Novel Msk2 Kinase in Metastatic Prostate Cancer". Term: 3/1/17– 2/28/18. Amount Awarded: $35,000. Role: PI. 

Fredric E. Wondisford, MD was awarded a National Institutes of Health Grant, entitled "Transcriptional Coactivators and Hepatic Glucose Production".  Term: 1/1/2017 – 12/31/2017. Amount : $311,241. Role: PI. 

Raymond B. Birge, PhD was awarded a grant from ElsaLys Pharmaceuticals, entitled “Development of antagonistic anti-Mertk and anti-Tyro3 antibodies for immune-oncology”. Term: 11/1/2016 – 12/1/2017. Amount Awarded: $42,000. Role: PI. 

Jared E. Toettcher, PhD was awarded an American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant, entitled “Developing an optogenetic approach to detect signaling alterations in cancer”. Term: 10/1/16 – 9/30/17. Amount Awarded: $50,000.  Role: PI. 

Joshua D. Rabinowitz, MD, PhD received a 2016 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for “Metabolism in Action: Quantitative Fluxes in Mammals”. Term: 9/30/2016 – 7/31/2021. Amount Awarded: $1,134,000. Role: PI.

Raymond B. Birge, PhD was awarded a grant from Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, entitled Anti-PS antibodies and tumor immunology. T erm: 9/1/2016 – 8/1/2017. Amount Awarded: $159,000. Role: PI. 

Presentations
Dr. Pasqualini Beginning the Lecture
On March 30, 2017, the Cancer Metabolism & Growth Program hosted a lecture " Ligand-directed Targeting and Molecular Imaging in Translational Medicine", with guest speakers Renate Pasqualini, PhD and Wadih Arap, MD, PhD from University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center. Topics of their presentation included how molecules selectively present in different levels of tumors' vascular diversity can yield "zip codes" that could be utilized for anti-tumor effects, and the role of internalizing phages in attacking tumors. 


                                                 Dr. Arap Conducting Second Half of Presentation
In October 2016 at Harvard University’s 19th John B. Little Center for Radiation Science Symposium in Boston, MA,  Eileen White, PhD presented “ Autophagy-mediated Recycling Sustains Survival of Cancer Cells”.

At MD Anderson Cancer Center's Cancer Evolution: Mechanisms of Vulnerability and Resistance Symposium in October 2016,  Eileen White, PhD presented “ Identification of Metabolic Vulnerabilities of Ras-Driven Cancer Cells.”

Dr. Guo and Dr. White at the Cold Spring Harbor Asia Conference





The Cold Spring Harbor Asia conference, “Cancer and Metabolism”, was held in Suzhou, China from September 19-23, 2016.  Yanxiang (Jessie) Guo, PhD gave an oral presentation on her work with  Eileen White, PhD, entitled “ Autophagy Provides Metabolic Substrates to Maintain Energy Charge and Nucleotide Pools in Ras-Driven Lung Cancer Cells”.   

Eileen White, PhD presented “ Autophagy Provides Metabolic Substrates to Maintain Energy Charge and Nucleotide Pools in Ras-Driven Lung Cancer Cells” at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) Inaugural Symposium, “Horizons of Cancer Biology and Therapy”, held in conjunction with the Swiss Cancer Center-Lausanne (SCCL) from September 7-10, 2016 in Lausanne, Switzerland. 
Selected Publications

Melentijevic I,  Toth ML, Arnold ML, Guasp RJ,    Harinath G,      Nguyen KC, Taub D,     Parker JA, Neri C, Gabel CV,  Hall DH, & Driscoll M*. C. elegans neurons jettison protein aggregates and mitochondria under neurotoxic stress. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature21362. Published online February 8, 2017. 

Cell Metabolism featured Eileen White, PhD as one of 10 leading female scientists in its December 2016 piece, “Women in Metabolism: Part IV”. Click here to read “Eileen’s Rules” for being a successful scientist. 

Davra V, Kimani SG, Calianese D,&  Birge RB. Ligand Activation of TAM Family Receptors-Implications for Tumor Biology and Therapeutic Response. Cancers (Basel), 8(12). pii: E107. Published November 29, 2016. 

Naser M, Graham MT, Pierre K, & Boustany NN. Label-Free Classification of Bax/Bak Expressing vs. Double-Knockout Cells. Ann Biomed Eng, 44(11):3398-3407. Published November 2016. 

Schneper L, Brooks-Gunn J, Notterman D, & Soumi SJ. Early life experiences and telomere length in adult rhesus monkeys: an exploratory study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 78(9):1066-1071. Published November 2016. 

Jaber N, Mohd-Naim N, Wang Z, DeLeon JL, Kim S, Zhong H, Sheshadri N, Dou Z, Edinger AL, Du G, Braga VMM, Zong WX*. Vps34 regulates Rab7 and late endocytic trafficking through recruitment of the GTPase-activating protein Armus. J Cell Sci , 129: 4424-4435. DOI: 10.1242/jcs.192260. Published October 21, 2016.  

Kumar N , Srivillibhuthur M , Joshi S , Walton KD, Zhou A , Faller WJ, Perekatt AO, Sansom OJ, Gumucio DL, Xing J, Bonder,EM Gao NWhite E, &  Verzi MP*. A YY1-dependent increase in aerobic metabolism is indispensable for intestinal organogenesis.  Development, 143(20):3711-3722. Published October 15, 2016. 

Lashinger LM, O’Flanagan CH, Dunlap SM , Rasmussen AJ, Sweeney S,  Guo JY, Lodi A, Tiziani S,  White E, & Hursting SD. Starving cancer from the outside and inside: separate and combined effects of calorie restriction and autophagy inhibition on Ras-driven tumors. Cancer Metab, 4:18. Published September 16, 2016. 

Kimani SG, Kumar S, Davra V, Chang YJ, Kasikara C, Geng K, Tsou WI, Wang S, Hoque M, Boháč A, Lewis-Antes A, De Lorenzo MS, Kotenko SV, & Birge RB. Normalization of TAM post-receptor signaling reveals a cell invasive signature for Axl tyrosine kinase. Cell Commun Signal. 14(1):19. doi: 10.1186/s12964-016-0142-1. Published September 6, 2016. 

Amaravadi R, Kimmelman AC, &  White E.  Recent insights into the function of autophagy in cancer. Genes Dev, 30(17): 1913-1930. Published September 1, 2016. 

Moloughney JG, Kim PK, Vega-Cotto NM, Wu C, Zhang S, Adlam M, Lynch T, Chou P, Rabinowitz JD, Werlen G, & Jacinto E. mTORC2 Responds to Glutamine Catabolite Levels to Modulate the Hexosamine Biosynthesis Enzyme GFAT1. Mol Cell, 63(5): 811-826. Published September 1, 2016. 

*Contact Author
Cancer Pharmacology
Meet Our New Members!
Awards and Honors

Suzie Chen, PhD was elected by the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) into the rank of AAAS Fellow. The Induction Ceremony for Dr. Chen and the other Fellows was held on Saturday, February 18, 2017 in Boston, MA. 

In December 2016,  Joseph Marcotrigiano, PhD was chosen as a 2016 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholar. 
Presentations

On December 1, 2016, Stephen K. Burley, MD, DPhil presented " Using the Protein Data Bank to understand Cancer related point mutations in 3D" for a joint CP/CIPT Program Seminar at Rutgers Cancer Institute. 
                                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                             D r. Burley Presenting

Selected Publications

William J. Welsh, PhD is the co-corresponding author of “Small molecule inhibitors block
Gas6-inducible TAM activation and tumorigenicity”, which was published in the March 8, 2017, online issue of Scientific Reports. Other authors include Joseph R. Bertino, MD and Raymond B. Birge, PhD. Read more about this publication here.  

Tedeschi PM, Bansal N,  Kerrigan JE, Abali EE,  Scotto KW*, &  Bertino JR*. NAD+ Kinase as a Therapeutic Target in Cancer. Clin Cancer Res, 22(21): 5189-5195. Published November 1, 2016. 

*Contact Author
Other Important Updates

Several years of collaborative work between  Suzie Chen, PhD and  James S. Goydos, MD have resulted in a new licensing agreement between Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd, that was announced by Biohaven on October 3, 2016. Please  click here for a full press release. 

Clinical Investigations & Precision Therapeutics
Meet Our New Members!
                       Chen A. Liu, MD
                        Usha Malhotra, MD
                           Rahul R. Parikh, MD
                 Vinod K. Rustgi, MD, MBA 
                  Yaqun Wang, PhD, MS
  Awards and Honors

On January 5, 2017, the Society of Toxicology (SOT) announced Lauren M. Aleksunes, PharmD, PhD, DABT as its recipient of the 2016 SOT Achievement Award. Click here for the full press release. 

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)  selected  Rajat Bannerji, MD, PhD to serve as a member of the 2017 Program Committee. The 2017 AACR Annual Meeting took place in Washington, DC, from April 1-5, 2017.
Presentations

Collaborative translational research conducted by Darren Carpizo, MD, PhD and Edmund C. Lattime, PhD was presented at the 70th Annual Society of Surgical Oncology Cancer Symposium, held in Seattle, WA from March 15-18, 2017. Co-author Kristin Donahue presented the poster titled “ Intratumoral Vaccination Can Overcome Barriers to Immune Cell Recruitment in a Murine Model of PDAC”. Click here to read more about this research.
Jeffrey A. Rosenfeld, PhD presented " Advances in Cancer Genome Sequencing" at the Cancer Genomics Retreat held on March 13, 2017 at Princeton University. He discussed recent technological advances in long-read sequencing technology and how it can be applied to genomic analysis. Dr. Rosenfeld also showed examples of several types of sequencing devices, including the MinION, which is pictured below.
    Dr. Rosenfeld at Cancer Genomics Retreat
                                                          The MinION Sequencing Device
Rajat Bannerji, MD, PhD gave an oral presentation entitled “ Phase 1 Study of REGN1979, an Anti-CD20 x Anti-CD3 Bispecific Monoclonal Antibody, in Patients with CD20+ B-Cell Malignancies Previously Treated with CD20-Directed Antibody Therapy” at the American Society of Hematology (ASH®) 58th Annual Conference, held December 3-6, 2016 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, CA. 
  Rajat Bannerji, MD, PhD presented a poster for his recent work “ Phase 1b study of pembrolizumab in combination with dinaciclib in patients with hematologic malignancies” at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) 31st Annual Meeting & Associated Programs, held November 9-13 , 2016 at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
                       Dr. Bannerji at SITC Conference

Selected Publications

On March 16, 2017, Mark N. Stein, MD had his publication “First-in-human Clinical Trial of Oral ONC201 in Patients with Refractory Solid Tumorsaccepted in the “Online First” section of Clinical Cancer Research. Collaborators on this publication include Janice M. Mehnert, MD, Howard L. Kaufman, MD, FACS, Tina M. Mayer, MD, Ann W. Silk, MD, MS, Nancy Chan, MD, Lorna Rodriguez, MD, PhD, Bruce G. Haffty, MD, and Joseph R. Bertino, MD. Click here to read more about this publication.

Ott PA, Piha-Paul SA, Munster P, Pishvaian MJ, van Brummelen EM, Cohen RB, Gomez-Roca C, Ejadi S, Stein M, Chan E, Simonelli M, Morosky A, Saraf S, Emancipator K, Koshiji M, Bennouna J. Safety and antitumor activity of the anti-PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab in patients with recurrent carcinoma of the anal canal. Ann Oncol, DOI: 10.1093/annonc/mdx029. Published online February 7, 2017.  

Sontag ED. A Dynamic Model of Immune Responses to Antigen Presentation Predicts Different Regions of Tumor or Pathogen Elimination. Cell Syst, S2405-4712(16)30413-6. Published January 25, 2017.

George B, Wen X, Mercke N, Gomez M, O'Bryant C, Bowles DW, Hu Y, Hogan SL, Joy MS, & Aleksunes LM. Profiling of Kidney Injury Biomarkers in Patients Receiving Cisplatin: Time-Dependent Changes in the Absence of Clinical Nephrotoxicity. Clin Pharmacy Ther, doi: 10.1002/cpt.606. Published December 21, 2016.

Vodovotz Y, Xia A, Read EL, Bassaganya-Riera J, Hafler DA, Sontag E, Wang J, Tsang JS, Day JD, Kleinstein SH, Butte AJ, Altman MC, Hammond R, & Sealfon SC. Solving Immunology? Trends Immunol, 38(2):116-127. Published December 13, 2016. 
      Cell Reports tweet on Kolhapp et al  
      article
Kohlhapp FJ, Huelsmann EJ, Lacek AT, Schenkel JM, Lusciks J, Broucek JR, Goldufsky JW, Hughes T, Zayas JP, Dolubizno H, Sowell RT, Kühner R, Burd S, Kubasiak JC, Nabatiyan A, Marshall S, Bommareddy PK, Li S, Newman JH, Monken CE, Shafikhani SH, Marzo AL, Guevara-Patino JA,  Lasfar A, Thomas PG,  Lattime ECKaufman HLZloza A*. Non-oncogenic Acute Viral Infections Disrupt Anti-cancer Responses and Lead to Accelerated Cancer-Specific Host Death.  Cell Reports, 17(4): 957-965. Published October 18, 2016.

*Last/senior and contact author
Other Important Updates

Administrative supplemental funding is available for UM1 grants supporting the ETCTN to promote biomarker assay development for application in clinical studies in the ETCTN. The goal of these supplements is to support the development of validated biomarker assays that can be incorporated as endpoints into ETCTN studies to demonstrate target engagement, mechanism of action, mechanisms of resistance, or to enhance patient selection in subsequent studies. The long-term goal is to accelerate the development of NCI-IND agents to improve the outcome of cancer therapy. These supplements may also be used to develop methods to improve the quality of biopsies collected in ETCTN studies.

The deadline for all biomarker assay development supplement applications for FY17 will be June 1, 2017. Applications received after June 1st may not be considered for funding until the beginning of the next fiscal year, after October 1. For additional information, please see the full Biomarker Assay Development Supplement announcement.

Genome Instability & Cancer Genetics
Meet Our New Members!
Not Pictured: Eugenia Y. Xu, PhD
Awards and Honors

Wenwei Hu, PhD was awarded t he National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant (R01CA203965) entitled "The role of chronic stress in regulation of mutant p53 and tumorigenesis".  Term:  01/01/2017 - 12/31/2021. Amount Awarded:$1.8 million. Role: PI.  Read more about her award here

Dharm S. Patel, a graduate student in Samuel Bunting, PhD’s Laboratory, was a 2017 recipient of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) -Bristol Myers Squibb Scholar-in-Training Award for the abstract entitled “ Genomic instability in BRCA1-deficient cells is a result of the anti-recombinogenic activity of BLM helicase”. 

Subhajyoti De, PhD  was awarded an American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant entitled “Genomic characterization of structural alteration breakpoints in cancer”.  Term: 10/01/2016 – 09/30/2017. Amount Awarded: $50,000. Role: PI.   

Hossein Khiabanian, PhD was awarded an American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant entitled “Data-driven deep-sequencing design to detect small sub-clonal prognostic variants in cancer”.  Term: 10/01/2016 – 09/30/2017. Amount Awarded: $50,000. Role: PI.   

Katsonuri Sugimoto, MD was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant (R01GM120730) entitled “Regulation of ATM- and ATR-related protein kinases”.  Term: 09/08/2016 – 08/31/2017. Amount Awarded: $318,000. Role: PI.

Presentations
The Cancer Genomics Retreat,  held on March 13, 2017 at Princeton University,  featured several Genome Instability & Cancer Genetics Program Members. In her presentation “ Data-Driven, Tissue-Specific Understanding of Mutations and Networks In Human Disease”, Olga Troyanskaya, PhD discussed developing novel computational methods to analyze multiple large data sets to extract pathway information and testable hypotheses.

Michael L. Gatza, PhD followed her with “ Identification of Drivers of Oncogenic Signaling  through Integrative Genomic Analyses”, which explained how genomics combined with other approaches can be used to address specific signaling pathways that are activated in basal-like and triple negative breast cancers without apparent genetic alterations in pathway components. 

                                                   Dr. Gatza Discussing Breast Cancer Heterogeneity
Hossein Khiabanian, PhD presented “ Dynamics of Clonal Evolution in Leukemia Development and Progression”. He discussed using genomic characterization to determine how tumors evolve during disease progression and treatment resistance, and focused on Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and how the relapsed disease originates from branched evolution from ancestral subclones related but distinct from the leukemic population at diagnosis.
                                                                                                 

                                                                                      Dr. De Discussing Cancer Genomics

In “ Dissecting Complexity of Cancer Genomes”, Subhajyoti De, PhD discussed tumor evolution with respect to different orders of events in cancers.  
                                          
Mona Singh, PhD presented “ Computational Approaches to Uncover Cancer Genes”, which covered development of algorithms to relate gene mutations to their effect on protein domain structure as predictors of functionality in cancer.






Dr. Singh Presenting

Chang S. Chan, PhD  presented “ Germline TP53 Mutant Tumor Evolution, where he discussed how T cell lymphomas caused by p53 deficiency in mice evolve by the novel approach of sequencing the T cell receptor genes. Benjamin Raphael, PhD then discussed the development and use of novel genomic analysis tools to identify cancer pathways, tumor evolution and rare mutations in his presentation “ Algorithms for Interpretation and Evolution of Cancer Genomes”.

On December 1, 2016, Mona Singh, PhD presented " I ntegrated computationa l approaches to uncover cancer genes" for a joint GICG/CMG Program Seminar at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. 




                                                                                                                           
 
                                                                                                                  D r. Singh with Dr. Stephen Burley

Bin Tian, PhD presented  “Transcriptional and epigenetic dynamics impact alternative cleavage and polyadenylation” at the  American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Special Symposium, held from October 6-10, 2016 in Snowbird, UT. 
Rutgers Cancer Institute’s Center for Systems and Computational Biology (CSCB) hosted a "Workshop on Quantitative Methods in Cancer Genomics" from September 7-16, 2016, with the goal of introducing students of quantitative and biological sciences to important challenges in the field of cancer genomics. Featured presentations included “ High-throughput genome sequencing”, “ Introduction to genomic data analysis”, and “ Public cancer databases and genomic analysis tools” by  Hossein Khiabanian, PhD; “ Experimental design and power of data” by  Chang S. Chan, PhD; “ Disease classification in cancer” by  Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD; “ RNA-sequencing data analysis” by  Subhajyoti De, PhD; “ Clustering approaches for genomic data analysis” by  Gyan Bhanot, PhD; “ Cancer pathway analysis” by  Michael L. Gatza, PhD; and “ Proteomics of cancer” by  Justin M. Drake, PhD
Selected Publications

Fotinos A, Fritz DT, Lisica S, Liu Y, &  Rogers MB. Competing Repressive Factors Control Bone Morphogenetic Protein 2 (BMP2) in Mesenchymal Cells.  J Cell Biochem. 117(2):439-47. doi: 10.1002/jcb.25290. Published February 2017. 

Li M, Cole F, Patel DS, Misenko SM, Her J, Malhowski A, Alhamza A, Zheng H, Baer R, Ludwig T, Jasin M, Nussenzweig A, Serrano L, & Bunting SF*. 53BP1 ablation rescues genomic instability in mice expressing ‘RING‐less’ BRCA1. EMBO Reports, 17(11): 1532-1541. Published November 1, 2016.

Tian B Manley JL. Alternative polyadenylation of mRNA precursors.  Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. Published online September 28, 2016.

Oshima K, Khiabanian H, da Silva-Almeida AC, Tzoneva G, Abate F, Ambesi-Impiombato A, Sanchez-Martin M, Carpenter Z, Penson A, Perez-Garcia A, Eckert C, Nicolas C, Balbin M, Sulis ML, Kato M, Koh K, Paganin M, Basso G, Gastier-Foster JM, Devidas M, Loh ML, Kirschner-Schwabe R, Palomero T, Rabadan R, & Ferrando A. Mutational landscape, clonal evolution patterns and role of RAS mutations in relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 113(40):11306-11311. Published online September 21, 2016.

Zheng C, Liu J, Huang G, Zhao Y, Yue X, Wu H, Li J, Zhu J, Shen Z, Haffty BG, Hu W*, & Feng Z*. Cullin3–KLHL25 ubiquitin ligase targets ACLY for degradation to inhibit lipid synthesis and tumor progression. Genes & Dev, 30: 1956-1970. Published September 1, 2016.

Lambert MW. Nuclear alpha spectrin: Critical roles in DNA interstrand cross-link repair and genomic stability. J Exptl Biol Med, 241(15)1621-1638. Published September 2016.

*Corresponding Author
Basic Research & Clinical Research Programs 
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey