Last month, the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center hosted the 20th Midwest DNA Repair Symposium, held at Thwing Center on the CWRU campus and organized by Drs. Alex Almasan, Junran Zhang and Youwei Zhang.  The symposium attracted 139 attendees from 10 states across the east to midwest region, as well as from Canada and China. 

The two keynote speakers,  Drs. Stephen Kowalczykowski from University of California, Davis and Lee Zou from Massachusetts General Hospital, delivered exciting research findings during this meeting .    Dr Kowalczykowski showed how BRCA1/2-Rad51 regulate DSB repair, whereas  Dr. Zou presented novel findings about A TR in regulating transcription-coupled stress. The meeting also presented a wide variety of research topics ranging basic m echanisms underlying the DNA damage response and repair, to replication checkpoints, to cell cycle control, to telomere regulation and to technologies that detect/measure DNA repair. 

Sponsors of this exciting event included BGI Inc., Tanon Inc., Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Ohio State University Cancer Center, and CWRU Department of Pharmacology. 

Abbey Perl - Case Western Reserve University

"A novel role for Protein Phosphatase 2A (PP2A) in the regulation of replication stress"

Tatinana Moiseeva - University of Pittsburgh

"ATR/Chk1 signaling controls replication initiation in undamaged cells"

Yaqun Teng - University of Pittsburgh

Rachel Speer - University of Louisville

It takes an "A" team to make headway against glioblastoma, a highly aggressive type of brain cancer. Glioblastoma is the most common type of malignant brain tumor in adults. In addition to the caliber of the researchers involved, in this case "a" also stands for atlas.

Key members of the team include Case CCC members  Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan, PhD, Case CCC Associate Director for Bioinformatics and the Sally S. Morley Designated Professor in Brain Tumor Research at CWRU School of Medicine, and Justin Lathia, PhD, Assistant Professor and Associate Staff of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, who along with approximately 80 other internationally renowned neurologists, bioinformaticians, and pathologists from the United States and India recently published details of the Ivy Glioblastoma Atlas in  Science [ Puchalski, Science, 2018].

The atlas maps out comprehensive, visually-rich information on the anatomic and genetic bases of glioblastoma at the cellular and molecular levels associated with the disease. It is aimed at helping researchers and physicians improve the diagnosis and treatment of glioblastoma, including finding new drug targets. While Atlas-based data have been previously available, the new paper in  Science represents the first published research outlining the project in detail. more>

Register today for  VeloSano Bike to Cure , 20-22, 2018!  

Jul 26-27, 2018