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0:00
Hello, everybody. My
name is Robert Zorec.
I will talk about
lysosomal fusion, today,
and lysosomal fusion that we use
to generate a new
treatment for cancer.
0:14
In the next slide, we see that
what our aims are in the lab,
we study single cells.
We study vesicle dynamics,
signaling cell metabolism,
to gain insights into mechanisms
in health and disease
of, of course, diseases.
And try to transform
key medical challenges
into therapies.
We have two translational
directions:
cancer and neurological
indications.
Cancer, I will talk later,
but I just want to mention
that we have developed
this treatment based on
studying lysosomal
fusion in cells.
And then we made cell-based
immunotherapy to treat
prostate cancer,
the treatment now
available for patients already.
The question is, what is
the common denominator
between these two directions?
Neurological indications and
cancer, we see that these are
two common denominators.
In the nervous system,
we don't only have
nerves, neurons,
but also we have
non neuronal cells
that are called neuroglia.
And this neuroglial cells among
them are also astrocytes.
A property known
aerobic glycolysis.
It's a metabolism that is
also common in cancer cells.
The other common denominator,
of course, as I mentioned,
are lysosomes and lysosomes,
especially in
reactive astrocytes
that are linked to cancer.
1:36
Now, in the next slide,
we try to explain what
reactive astrocytes are.
These are astrocytes that
change during a
pathological insult.
They gain morphological
molecular functional changes.
These changes include hallmark,
that is the overexpression
of intermediate filaments.
These are cytoskeletal
elements that,
actually, determine
the shape of cells.
We asked whether vesicles,
lysosomes in this particular
case are remodeled,
their dynamics is remodeled
under different in
vitro conditions.
In other words, we wanted
to actually generate
reactive astrocytes in
laboratory conditions,
in vitro conditions.
