Duncan Ayers
University of Malta, Malta
Title: Non-coding RNA involvement in cancer: The case for Neuroblastoma
Biography
Biography: Duncan Ayers
Abstract
Neuroblastoma (NB) is a paediatric tumour afflicting the developing neurons and typically manifests itself in children between 1-5 years of age. The prognosis for NB is in the region of 50%, with this value lowering to 15% in cases of relapsed NB. Furthermore, NB development and clinical manifestation depends on multiple molecular networks’ dysreguated activities, including at the genomic and transcriptomic levels.
The introduction of RNA interference (RNAi) technology in the 1990s gave a new insight into factors acting on oncogene regulatory processes. Noncoding sequences of the transcriptome have been in fact found to play major roles in gene regulation. MiRNAs are noncoding ribonucleic acids of approximately 22 base pairs in size originating within the cell and function as chief regulators in gene expression.
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are a novel class of approximately 15,000 – 20,000 non -protein coding RNAs, having a base length of over 200 nucleotides and are the result of RNA Polymerase II activities. Long non-coding RNAs have only just recently been identified to play a major role in gene regulatory pathways for a wide spectrum of human disease conditions, including multiple cancer models such as NB.
Consequently, our group has played a part in discovering and developing novel non-coding RNA biomarkers deemed to have direct influence on NB tumourigenesis and other tumour characteristics, including conventional therapy chemoresistance.