| Grant number: | 14/08321-3 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral |
| Start date: | September 01, 2014 |
| End date: | February 28, 2018 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Genetics - Human and Medical Genetics |
| Agreement: | Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) |
| Principal Investigator: | Houtan Noushmehr |
| Grantee: | Camila Ferreira de Souza |
| Host Institution: | Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (FMRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil |
| Associated research grant: | 15/07925-5 - Open source software statistical tools to aid in analyzing and integrating large cancer epigenomic datasets in order to decipher and understand regulatory networks, AP.JP |
| Associated scholarship(s): | 16/15485-8 - Clinical biomarkers in central nervous system tumors, BE.EP.PD |
Abstract Glioma is a heterogeneous group of tumors whose aetiology, histomorphologic features, molecular signatures, clinical behavior, response to therapy, and prognosis are variable. Glioma accounts for around eighty percent of all primary brain cancers. Some low-grade gliomas tend to progress to lesions with higher grades of malignancy. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), considered a high grade (IV) astrocytoma, is the most frequent and aggressive brain glioma in humans. Glioblastoma is treatment refractory, and patients with GBM have a poor prognosis with an overall median survival time of less than 15 months, highlighting an urgent need to define tumor subtypes which can improve the development of second line treatments for relapsed tumors. Epigenetic aberrations accumulate during tumorigenesis. Genomic instability and overexpression of oncogenes may occur downstream of abnormal DNA hypomethylation. Conversely, hypermethylation of CpG islands located in the promoter regions of tumor suppressor genes is an important mechanism for gene inactivation in neoplastic cells. Markedly, Noushmehr and colleagues (2010) first characterized a CpG island methylator phenotype as a distinct subgroup of human gliomas on both molecular and clinical grounds. In this scenario, this project aims to integrate the next-generation sequencing technology with clinical data, by harnessing both in-house and proven bioinformatic tools and data available in public databases, to better understand how the epigenome influences the progression from low-grade gliomas to glioblastomas. This integrated analysis will help to define aberrantly functioning molecular pathways and new subgroups that may be of clinical importance and able to enlighten the contribution of DNA methylation changes to glioblastoma pathology. (AU) | |
| News published in Agência FAPESP Newsletter about the scholarship: | |
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