Funded Grants

MicroRNAs in brain cancer

Brain cancer is one of the most lethal cancers for both men and women in the United States. Despite the use of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, the survival rate for patients remains extremely poor (<10% over 2 years). New therapies are desperately needed to treat this disease, and new tools are required to diagnose this disease early. We showed previously that a key gene activated in brain cancer, RAS, can be repressed by another cancer gene, let-7. Our work on let-7 and its control of cancer genes has the potential to lead to a treatment for brain cancer, and perhaps other types of high-profile cancers, involving RAS.

Additional work has shown that a new gene called mir-21 is on at dramatically increased levels in glioblastoma, but the role of this gene in the disease is unknown. We hope to test the idea that this gene is a cause of the disease. If so, this may lead to another potential therapy for brain cancer, in this case one that targets this mir-21 gene. It could also lead to a potential diagnostic tool to identify brain cancer early enough for successful treatments using current approaches. In this case, brain cells making high levels of mir-21 might be candidates for cells with a high likelihood of becoming cancerous.

Both let-7 and mir-21 are genes that code for small RNA molecules called microRNAs. There is tremendous excitement in the therapeutic field about using small RNA molecules as therapies and diagnostic tools. Our laboratory is at the forefront of this emerging technology and hope that one of the first successful applications will be in impacting brain cancer.