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Cancer Biology Laboratory
Principal Investigator : Dr. Trivadi S. Ganesan
Email: tsganesan@aims.amrita.edu |
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Dr Ganesan took his MBBS and MD from India and MRCP, FRCP in medical oncology from the Royal College of Physician followed by his MA from University of Oxford and Ph.D from University of London, UK. He then went on to become a faculty at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and Churchill Hospital (1990-2005) at Oxford until his return to India to take up the current position of Chairman of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Cancer institute at AIMS.
My research is in two areas. Firstly, the study of cancer stem cells which is a relatively new hypothesis in how cancer develops- both haematological as well as in solid tumours. Our aim is to understand and characterize this cancer stem cells in a range of solid tumours and haematological malignancies and study their properties. |
If the cancer stem cells hypothesis is correct then targeting these cells is very important for management of patients with cancer. We plan in the first instance to isolate cancer stem cells from ovarian cancer, testicular cancer, breast cancer and study their properties. This we plan doing by combination of approaches, which include micro-array, genetic analysis and biochemistry. Signaling in these cells is going to be vitally important to understand the differences between these cells and other malignant cells within the tumour population.
The second area of research is to try and understand signaling pathways, which are commonly affected in cancer. These include both the MAP kinase pathway and the PI3 kinase pathway. Usually, cells are stimulated by signaling through receptors which are on the surface of the cells. These are increased in expression or amplified at the gene level in cancer. This has let to the discovery of specific small molecule inhibitors which target type I receptor tyrosine kinases and type III receptor tyrosine kinases. We plan to study signaling mechanisms of these receptor tyrosine kinases by using small molecular inhibitors which are in the clinic adopting a combined approach of 1D/ 2D gels and mass spectrometry. This will help us to define targets better and also increase our understanding how receptors signal.
CSIR/UGC Junior/Senior Research Fellowship (JRF/SRF) qualified students who are interested in pursuing a PhD program in my lab can submit their applications by email. Interested post-doctoral fellows are also invited to apply.
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Important Publications
- Verma, S. K., Ganesan, T. S., and Parker, P. J. The tumour suppressor RASSF1A is a novel substrate of PKC. FEBS Lett, 582: 2270-2276, 2008.
- Bignone, P. A., Lee, K. Y., Liu, Y., Emilion, G., Finch, J., Soosay, A. E., Charnock, F. M., Beck, S., Dunham, I., Mungall, A. J., and Ganesan, T. S. RPS6KA2, a putative tumour suppressor gene at 6q27 in sporadic epithelial ovarian cancer. Oncogene, 26: 683-700, 2007.
- Sudha S.Sundar, Huijuan Zhang, Philip Brown, Sanjiv Manek, Cheng Han, Kulwinder Kaur, Mark F.L.Charnock, David Jackson, and S.Ganesan*, T. Prognostic significance of lymphangiogenesis and angiogenesis in epithelial ovarian cancer. British Journal of Cancer, 94: 1650-1657, 2006.
- Nicke, B., Bastien, J., Khanna, S. J., Warne, P. H., Cowling, V., Cook, S. J., Peters, G., Delpuech, O., Schulze, A., Berns, K., Mullenders, J., Beijersbergen, R. L., Bernards, R., Ganesan, T. S., Downward, J., and Hancock, D. C. Involvement of MINK, a Ste20 family kinase, in Ras oncogene-induced growth arrest in human ovarian surface epithelial cells. Mol Cell, 20: 673-685, 2005.
- Madhusudan, S., Tamir, A., Bates, N., Flanagan, E., Gore, M. E., Barton, D. P., Harper, P., Seckl, M., Thomas, H., Lemoine, N. R., Charnock, M., Habib, N. A., Lechler, R., Nicholls, J., Pignatelli, M., and Ganesan, T. S. A multicenter Phase I gene therapy clinical trial involving intraperitoneal administration of E1A-lipid complex in patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer overexpressing HER-2/neu oncogene. Clin Cancer Res, 10: 2986-2996, 2004.
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