The Non-Coding RNA Revolution in Biomedical Research and Ultraprecision Medicine 

Venue: Edificio Povo 2, via Sommarive nr. 9, Povo (Tn) - Room B107
 At 3.00 p.m.

• Pier Paolo Pandolfi - Cancer Research Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center & Harvard Medical School, Boston (MA), USA.

Dr. Pandolfi holds the Reisman Endowed Chair of Medicine and is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. Pier He currently serves as the Director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Cancer Research Institute, Harvard Medical School, in Boston. The research carried out in Dr. Pandolfi's laboratory has been seminal at elucidating the molecular mechanisms and the genetics underlying the pathogenesis of leukemias, lymphomas and solid tumors as well as in modeling these cancers in the mouse. Dr. Pandolfi and colleagues have characterized the function of the fusion oncoproteins and the genes involved in the chromosomal translocations of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), as well as of major tumor suppressors such PTEN and p53 and novel genetic players such LRF/Pokemon. The elucidation of the molecular basis underlying APL pathogenesis has led to the development of novel and effective therapeutic strategies. His work has been recently focused on the non-coding space and in particular on the activity of a new class of RNAs – competitive endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs), LncRNAs and circRNAs - which forms a large-scale regulatory network across the transcriptome, greatly expanding the functional genetic information in the human genome and playing important roles in pathological conditions, such as cancer.