Qurat-ul-Ain
Dr. Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research - ICCBS, Pakistan
Title: Modulation of melanoma cell proliferation and spreading by novel small molecular weight bioactive compound
Biography
Biography: Qurat-ul-Ain
Abstract
Melanoma, the most dangerous skin cancer, originates from the melanocytes and has a high tendency to invade neighboring tissues, and metastasize. Both bioactive compounds appear to be involved in the modulation of melanocyte transformation and melanoma progression as well as invasion. Consequently, potent bioactive compounds may prevent transformation and progression of the tumor. Melanoma is also the most common malignancy diagnosed in United States. Out of 3.5 million, 2 million cancer cases diagnosed in US annually, resulting mostly in-patient death and poor survival. With emerging new therapies early detection and treatment has resulted in high survival rates with 85% of patients surviving for at least 10 years. One of these upcoming therapeutics is the use of bioactive compounds, which have proven to show increase response rate (IRR) and overall survival (OS) rates. In fact, dacarbazine is the only FDA approved chemotherapeutic bioactive compound for melanoma treatment. Therefore, we have identified eight bioactive compounds of four different new synthetic classes synthesized by our collaborator as anti-melanoma/anti invasion agents. These compounds were previously found to posse’s antioxidant and prooxidant in an in vitro antioxidant assay. Compounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were found to be most potent anti-melanoma agent. We are now testing these compounds for their migration inhibition role in skin melanoma as well as skin stem cells in vitro and their ability to reduce proliferation and spreading. We are currently analyzing the influence of these compounds on the molecular pathways, involved in the proliferation-invasion inhibition.
Recent Publication
- Barakat A, Ghabbour H A, Al-Majid A M, Imad Qurat-ul-Ain R, Javaid K, Shaikh N N and Wadood A (2016) Synthesis, X-ray crystal structures, biological evaluation, and molecular docking studies of a series of barbiturate derivatives. Journal of Chemistry 1-11.
- Donat-Vargas C, Berglund M, Glynn A, Wolk A and Åkesson A (2017) Dietary polychlorinated biphenyls, long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and incidence of malignant melanoma. European Journal of Cancer 72:137-143.