SEMINAR: Targeting cell death in cancer

Guest: Özgür Kütük, Sabancı University

Title: Targeting cell death in cancer

Time: March 20, 2024, 13:40 - 14:30

Room: FENS G035

Abstract: The aim of cancer therapy (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, surgery) is the elimination of cancer cells efficiently, selectively and completely. Chemotherapy is used either as a primary treatment with metastatic breast cancer or used as a neoadjuvant/adjuvant therapy before/after surgery. There are more than a hundred drugs, which are approved for treatment of cancer, but the age-adjusted death rates related to epithelial carcinomas have changed only moderately over the last two decades. BH3 profiling exposes mitochondria to proapoptotic BH3 peptides and measures the amount of mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP). When a large magnitude of MOMP is induced by small amounts of peptide, we consider the mitochondrion to be relatively “primed” for apoptotic death. We have found that baseline apoptotic priming predicts clinical response to conventional chemotherapeutics. To identify the best therapy for that patient based on identifying the therapy that promotes the greatest death signaling in tumor cells ex vivo. This is the ultimate goal of precision medicine—to match the right drug with the right patient.

Bio: Ozgur Kutuk graduated from Marmara University School of Medicine in 2000 and Sabanci University Biological Sciences and Bioengineering Program in 2006. He studied as a postdoctoral research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School between 2006-2012 under supervision of Anthony Letai. He worked at Baskent University School of Medicine, Department of Immunology as a faculty member until he joined Sabanci University, Molecular Biology, Genetics and Bioengineering Program in 2024. His lab actively works on cancer cell death and molecular cancer therapeutics.