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0:00
Hello. Welcome to this
introductory lecture
on Genomic Instability
and Cancer.
My name is Zhiyuan Shen,
I'm a professor at
the Rutgers Robert Wood
Johnson Medical School.
I'm also the Associate
Director for
Basic Research at
the Rutgers Cancer
Institute of New Jersey.
Today, I'm excited to introduce
the topic of genomic
instability and cancer.
0:28
I hope to cover four topics.
I will go over the
general features and
the key mechanisms that
help to maintain the
genomic integrity,
then briefly talk
about the concept of
synthetic lethality
and to exploit
DNA repair mechanisms for
the treatment of cancer.
0:50
First of all, why do we need
to talk about genomic
instability in cancer?
It turns out and
not surprisingly,
that cancers often have
accumulated multiple genomic
alterations in the genomes.
As shown in this table
published about 10 years ago,
one can already observe
multiple mutations in
different cancer types simply by
examining X and sequences
of the coding genes.
When talking about genomic
alterations on mutations,
we should keep in mind that
some mutations are drivers
that can directly lead to
the cancer growth and
survival advantages.
But perhaps more are
just passenger
mutations that might
not directly contribute
to the growth advantage,
but they can reveal
the genomic basis of
cancer evolution and
cancer vulnerability
to selective therapy.
