Kaiser Jamil
Bhagwan Mahavir Medical Research Centre, India
Title: Identifying new targets in leukemogenesis using computational approaches
Biography
Biography: Kaiser Jamil
Abstract
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is a hematopoietic cancer predominant in children and involves many aberrant pathways. There is a need to identify novel targets to improve our understanding of disease biology and for developing new therapeutics. Hence, the aim of our study was to uncover new genes as targets using in silico approaches. We first analyzed Oncomine micro array database to profile the top 10% overexpressed genes of significance. These were then prioritized using ENDEAVOUR, DIR and TOPPGene online tools to identify novel candidate disease genes. Thirty training genes, overexpressed in ALL were retrieved from PubMed literature search to train the tools. Further, the functional association networking of the prioritized and training genes was investigated using STRING protein interaction database. The network was then analysed using cytoHubba tool to identify highly connected hub genes. From our analysis of Oncomine database, 530 genes were shortlisted which on prioritization revealed fifty four genes to be significant candidate leukemogenic genes. Our hub analysis of the protein network led to identification of two novel genes, SMAD2 and CDK9, which were not implicated in leukemogenesis earlier. Filtering out from several hundred genes in the network we also found MEN1, HDAC1 and LCK genes to be important hubs, which re-emphasized their important role in leukemogenesis. This is the first report on these five additional signature genes in leukemogenesis. Our findings suggest that these genes could serve as new targets for developing novel therapeutics and also as biomarkers in leukemogenesis, which could be important for prognosis and diagnosis.