Stories

June 17, 2021

Gene transcription is controlled largely by transcription factors that bind to enhancers, which are regions of the DNA that loop over to genes to activate them. While silencers have been hypothesized to work in a similar manner albeit to silence gene regulation, the understanding of gene repression mechanism remains elusive. In this study, researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) have made inroads into identifying silencers, particularly looping silencers, and understanding their mechanisms of function.

June 10, 2021

Congratulations to CSI Deputy Director and Senior Principal Investigator, Prof. Chng Wee Joo, on being conferred the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine Graduate Mentor of the Year (GRAMAY) 2021! Presented annually, the GRAMAY award honors and celebrates faculty staff in recognition of their excellence in graduate supervision, intellectual and professional development as well as career development of their graduate students.

June 10, 2021

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) represent a vast repertoire of potential targets for new drugs against human diseases. But not all PPIs are suitable as drug targets, and many hundreds of thousands of PPIs occur in human cells. As such, identifying the right PPI target for the development of next-generation drugs is oftentimes akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Ashok Venkitaraman’s laboratory has developed a novel approach to PPI target discovery, termed Protein-interference or Protein-i, whereby a library of biologically derived, short, stable peptides is used to hunt for ligands that can disrupt therapeutically important and potentially druggable PPIs.

June 4, 2021

WILMETTE, Ill., June 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monopar Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: MNPR), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company primarily focused on developing proprietary therapeutics designed to extend life or improve the quality of life for cancer patients, today announced it has entered into a collaboration agreement with the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) to evaluate the activity of MNPR-202 and related analogs in multiple types of cancer.

June 3, 2021

Despite advancements in cancer screening and diagnostics, a significant number of cancers are still diagnosed at a late stage with poor prognosis. Hence, the discovery of reliable and accurate methods to diagnose cancer early would be of great help in reducing cancer mortality. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are phospholipid vesicles found in many biofluids and are released by almost all types of cells. In this review, we present an analysis and evaluation of the current techniques of EV isolation and characterization, as well as discuss the potential EV biomarkers for specific types of cancer.

June 3, 2021

Dysregulated adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) RNA editing is implicated in various cancers. However, no available RNA editing inhibitors have so far been developed to inhibit cancer-associated RNA editing events. Here we decipher the RNA secondary structure of antizyme inhibitor 1 (AZIN1), one of the best-studied A-to-I editing targets in cancer, by locating its editing site complementary sequence (ECS) at the 3'end of exon 12.

June 3, 2021

Molecular profiling of the most aggressive brain tumor glioblastoma (GBM) on the basis of gene expression, DNA methylation, and genomic variations advances both cancer research and clinical diagnosis. The enhancer architectures and regulatory circuitries governing tumor-intrinsic transcriptional diversity and subtype identity are still elusive. Here, by mapping H3K27ac deposition, we analyze the active regulatory landscapes across 95 GBM biopsies, 12 normal brain tissues, and 38 cell line counterparts.

May 20, 2021

Inherited faults (‘mutations’) in the breast cancer gene, BRCA2, can lead to cancers of the breast, ovary or other organs. BRCA2 codes for a protein containing 3,418 building blocks (called ‘amino acids’) in human cells. Surprisingly, certain BRCA2 mutations that cause cancer affect just a single building-block out of over three thousand. Ashok Venkitaraman’s laboratory […]

May 12, 2021

CSI Singapore is proud to announce the promotion of Dr. Polly Chen to Associate Professor! Dr. Chen joined CSI Singapore in 2014 as a Principal Investigator. Since then, she has received multiple awards in recognition of her outstanding research, including the EMBO Young Investigator Program (YIP) and the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine Young Researcher Of the Year Award.

April 27, 2021

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) rarely divide, rest in quiescence and proliferate only upon stress hematopoiesis. The cytokine thrombopoietin (Thpo) has been perplexingly described to induce quiescence and promote self-renewal divisions in HSCs. In order to clarify the contradictory effect of Thpo, we conducted a detailed analysis on conventional (Thpo-/-) and liver-specific (Thpofl/fl;AlbCre+/-) Thpo deletion models. Thpo-/- HSCs exhibited profound loss of quiescence, impaired cell cycle progression and increased apoptosis.

April 27, 2021

Early relapse after platinum chemotherapy in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) portends poor survival. A-priori identification of platinum resistance is therefore crucial to improve on standard first-line carboplatin-paclitaxel treatment. The DNA repair pathway homologous recombination (HR) repairs platinum-induced damage, and the HR recombinase RAD51 is overexpressed in cancer. We therefore designed a REMARK-compliant study of pre-treatment RAD51 expression in EOC, using fluorescent quantitative immunohistochemistry (qIHC) to overcome challenges in quantitation of protein expression in situ.

April 27, 2021

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. Tumor heterogeneity, which hampers development of targeted therapies, was herein deconvoluted via single cell RNA sequencing in aggressive human adenocarcinomas (carrying Kras-mutations) and comparable murine model. We identified a tumor-specific, mutant-KRAS-associated subpopulation which is conserved in both human and murine lung cancer.

April 19, 2021

The pathways that control the behaviour of cells are complex, non-linear and highly redundant. As such, identifying the right molecular target for the development of next-generation drugs is oftentimes akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Ashok Venkitaraman’s laboratory developed a novel approach termed “Protein-interference” or “Protein-i” to hunt for new drug targets, which was spun out in 2016 by University of Cambridge into the biotech company PhoreMost, with Dr. Venkitaraman as co-founder.

April 19, 2021

ATP-hydrolyzing enzymes like protein kinases are major drug targets for oncology. Drugs that inhibit these enzymes typically engage their ATP-binding (active) sites to inhibit catalysis. However, these active sites are structurally similar to one another, especially in enzymes belonging to the same family, making it difficult to develop drugs that are highly selective with reduced off-target effects. Ashok Venkitaraman’s laboratory has systematically developed a different approach to this problem – termed ‘allo-targeting’.

April 13, 2021

CSI Principal Investigator, Dr. Anand Jeyasekharan, was recently involved in a pioneering study performed by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States and the National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS). Findings from this study revealed that Topotecan, a chemotherapeutic drug, can reduce the severity and death rates of infection by SARS-CoV-2 and may potentially be used to treat patients with moderate to severe forms of Covid-19.

April 8, 2021

The Long Service Awards were presented to employees in appreciation for their valued contributions and dedicated service to NUS. A total of 13 recipients have been conferred the Long Service Award for their 5, 10, 15 and 20 years of service respectively. CSI Singapore would like to congratulate and thank the following recipients for their […]

April 7, 2021

Congratulations to Dr. Teoh Phaik Ju, Research Fellow from Prof. Chng Wee Joo’s lab, who has recently been awarded the prestigious International Myeloma Society (IMS) and Paula and Rodger Riney Foundation Career Development Award for her outstanding research proposal.

April 6, 2021

In this study, a team of researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), the International Research Center for Medical Sciences (IRCMS) at the Kumamoto University and the Tokyo Women’s Medical University (TWMU) investigated the maintenance of HSCs in quiescence as well as its association with cytokine Thrombopoietin (Thpo).

March 19, 2021

Dr. Chong Shu Yun Phyllis and Dr. Teoh Phaik Ju were awarded by A/Prof. Kevin Tan, Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies Congratulations to Dr. Teoh Phaik Ju and Dr. Chong Shu Yun Phyllis, who were honoured for their research achievements at the NUS Medicine Awards 2020 Ceremony. The award ceremony recognises and celebrates the success and […]

March 12, 2021

The Epigenetics in Cancer Symposium 2021 has concluded successfully! Jointly organized by the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, NUS and the Université de Paris, the symposium drew an overwhelming turnout of 442 participants hailing from 32 countries. This inaugural symposium boasted an impressive line-up of speakers, including keynote speaker, Dr. Geneviève Almouzni from the Institut Curie, Paris.