Seminar “Epigenetics in brain cancer”

Epigenetics in brain cancer

Summary of the talk: Gliomas constitute a heterogenous group of primary brain tumors that include the especially aggressive glioblastomas, which relapse in nearly all cases despite intensive therapies. Epigenetics dysregulation can be relevant in the formation and maintenance of glioblastomas as it maintains the undifferentiated and self-renewal state of cancer cells due to a permanent epigenetic block. In contrast to somatic mutations, altered epigenetics can be pharmacologically treated, offering opportunities for novel therapies. In this seminar, we will discuss our current work regarding the role of epigenetics in glioblastoma, including the potential use of histone variants in clinical diagnosis and epigenetic modulators in precision medicine.

Luis Miguel Valor Becerra is Principal Investigator of the “Genetics, Epigenetics and Transcription in Neuropathologies” group at ISABIAL and IDiBE, and Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMH. His group is interested in the search for new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for diseases caused by trinucleotide expansion (in particular, Huntington’s disease) and brain cancer (glioblastoma), with particular emphasis on proposing minimally invasive solutions for affected individuals. These rare diseases have a poor prognosis and there are few tools that allow adequate personalized follow-up of patients. To this end, they combine traditional biochemical, molecular and cell biology techniques with more advanced techniques such as transcriptomics, epigenomics and artificial intelligence, believing that these latter approaches may provide promising answers.