Cancer Research Institute

Girish Shah, PhD

Laval University and CHU-Q Hospital Research Centre, Quebec City, QC

Monday, 26 June 2017 at 12:00 noon in QCRI Conference Rooms 100/01

“Expanding roles of PARP1 in DNA-damage responses and its implication for cancer therapy"

After 50 years of discovery of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) metabolism, we are still identifying novel physiological and stress-related responses of PARP1, the principle enzyme of PARP metabolism. PARP1 is among the first proteins in mammalian cells to reach the DNA lesions, and gets activated to form polymers of ADP-ribose (PAR) that post-translationally modify target proteins. Prof Shah’s team has been exploring consequences of PARP-1 activation and PARylation of target proteins at the site of different types of DNA lesions in different processes ranging from DNA repair to cell death and cancer. He will discuss recently identified roles of PARP1 in cellular responses to UV-damaged DNA, including the nucleotide excision repair pathway (1), and non-homologous end joining repair (2). Professor Shah’s team has recently developed SKH-1 albino hairless PARP1-knockout mice as a model to study the roles of PARP1 in solar UV-induced non-melanoma skin cancers. Lastly, he will discuss how the pharmacological inhibitors of PARP1 have the potential to offer novel therapeutic approaches for treatment of not only BRCA-mutant breast and ovarian cancers (3,4), but also other cancers and non-cancer pathologies associated with PARP metabolism.

Hosts: Drs. Lois Mulligan (mulligal@queensu.ca) and Peter Greer (greerp@queensu.ca)

Everyone is welcome!