Ioannis Papasotiriou
R.G.C.C.S.A., Greece
Title: Innovations in drug development through transcriptomic analysis of liquid biopsies and exosome utility
Biography
Biography: Ioannis Papasotiriou
Abstract
Liquid biopsy becomes one of a key tool sampling in cancer, which may be proved to be prognostic and even diagnostic analytical method. Additionally, to that, circulating tumor cells may become relevant entity to indicate new druggable targets. In our study, we analyze plenty of circulating tumor cells transcriptome. The analysis of transcriptome for repeatable expression patterns in combination of data mining, reveal new druggable targets that lead to ligand based drug design of new molecules with pharmacophore properties. Specifically, the analysis revealed a repeatable pattern in hormone depended breast carcinoma cases, where ERK1 and ERK2 transcripts were highly overexpressed. Then a ligand based drug design has been initiated and few candidate molecules have been generated from RGCC1 to RGCC12. Then the candidate RGCC7 showed the best efficacy against this specific type of cancer, both in cancer cell lines and primary cells cultures as well. Furthermore, the candidate RGCC7 has been encapsulated in exosomes derived from cancer cell cultures of the same origin. Then the efficacy of the candidate molecule increased up to 80 percent approximately compared to the non-encapsulated form. This process reveled that firstly selecting the proper sample for analysis is important in finding of druggable targets. And secondly, the improvement of drug delivery can equally be improved by using biological systems that we are already familiar with.