报告题目：Understanding transcriptome abnormality in human liver cancer

报告人：Dr. Polly Leilei Chen
　　　　Principal Investigator, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore
　　　　President Assistant Professor, Department of Anatomy, National　University of Singapore

报告时间：2015年9月24日上午10：30

报告地点：金沙8888js官方一楼中厅

I received my MD with honors from the Medical College, Jiangsu University in 2002 and my PhD degree from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 2010. After 2-year postdoctoral training at HKU, I was recruited as a Research Assistant Professor and Special Fellow at the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) where I direct a research lab studying human cancers. Currently I am a Principal Investigator in CSI and a President Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine,National University of Singapore (NUS). My research has centered on transcriptome instability of human cancers and in particular on understanding how RNA editing contributes to cancer initiation and progression. So far, scientists have put much effort into the identification of DNA mutations and fusion genes in cancer using whole-genome sequencing (WGS) or Exome sequencing (Exome-Seq). RNA editing, which cannot be detected by either WGS or Exome-Seq, introduces changes in the RNA sequences encoded by the genome. Although RNA editing has been known for 20 years, there is a lack of studies demonstrating how it plays a role in cancer. My scientific achievements include being the first group to describe RNA editome imbalance in human liver cancer and esophageal carcinoma (Chen et al., Nature Med, 2013; Chan et al., Gut, 2014; Qi et al., Cancer Res, 2014; Qin et al., Cancer Res, 2014) and deciphering a “driver” RNA editing event in liver cancer in which increased A-to-I RNA editing activity of the antizyme inhibitor 1 (AZIN1) gene confers a gain-of-function phenotype that is manifested by augmented tumor-initiating potential and more aggressive behavior (Chen et al., Nature Med, 2013).