Dr. E. Shyam P. Reddy

Dr. E. Shyam P. Reddy
Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Morehouse School of Medicine, USA

Biography

Dr. Shyam Reddy is a Professor and Director, Cancer Biology Program, Department of OB/GYN, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Cancer center for excellence, Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Ga. He carried out his Ph.D. work at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India and at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Gottingen, West Germany. His Ph.D. work was published as two papers (back to back) in the prestigious Nature journal for which he was awarded National Young Scientist award by the Prime minister of India. He obtained postdoctoral training in molecular biology at Yale University, CT (Dr Weissman, PNAS member). Dr Reddy discovered and cloned several cancer genes/oncogenes (close to 20 genes) and studied their functions. The most notable genes discovered by Dr Reddy include ERG-1, ERG-2, ERG-3 and human FLI-1genes. Drs Reddy and Rao named the gene as ERG (ETS Related Gene, published in prestigious journals Science and PNAS). ERG is a transcriptional factor, endothelial permeability factor and also a stem cell factor and is involved in 50-80% of Prostate cancers, Ewing sarcoma and also leukemias (AML). Other notable ETS genes discovered and studied by Dr Reddy include human Fli-1 (involved in 80% of Ewing family of tumors, Leukemias and Prostate cancer), EWS-Fli-1 (involved in 90% of Ewing Sarcoma, Pediatric cancer), EWS-erg (involved in Ewing Sarcoma), TLS-erg (involved in Acute Myeloid Leukemia), EWS (involved in multiple cancers), TLS/FUS (involved in multiple cancers), ELK-1 (Drs Reddy and Rao named this gene as ETS Like Gene, published in prestigious journals Science and Nature) and EWS-ATF-1 (malignant Melanoma of Soft Parts/Clear cell sarcoma). Dr Reddy and his group have also discovered novel post-translational mechanism mediated by BRCA2 in Breast Cancer cells that will have global effect on the Gene Expression, Protein turnover, Cell Death, Cancer and other Human diseases. Dr Reddy and his group have shown that ERG and FLI-1 proteins involved in several cancers are responsible for making cancer cells resistant to chemo-therapeutic agents. They are targeting these onco-proteins or their functions to develop novel targeted therapeutic agents. Using this strategy, they have developed several novel therapeutic agents (patent being submitted) that target Prostate cancer, Ewing Sarcoma, Breast cancer (including Triple Negative Breast Cancer), Pancreatic cancer, Ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer etc. These small molecules appear to be targeted therapeutic agents with no or little effect on normal cells. Dr Reddy received two grants from DOD to study on two targeted therapeutic agents against prostate cancer. Dr Reddy and his colleagues have also shown that anti-epileptic drug Valproic acid (VPA) targets ERG-positive Prostate cancers and Ewing Sarcoma and identified the molecular mechanism of action of VPA on ERG/Fli-1 associated cancers. Recently, they have identified novel ways by which ERG/ETS oncoproteins target different signaling pathways that leads to prostate and other cancers (leukemias, lymphomas and sarcomas). Dr Reddy and his colleagues have identified novel molecular mechanism of activation of TGF beta–signaling pathway by ERG oncoprotein in prostate cancer. Recently, Dr Reddy and his colleagues have shown that ETV1 onco-protein induces certain kinases in cancer cells which deregulate the critical Wnt/beta catenin pathway. They have also identified therapeutic agent that interferes with this process. They have also demonstrated that this therapeutic agent targets these cancer cells effectively (manuscript in press, 2016). These therapeutic agents will have a profound impact on prevention and treatment of prostate cancer which may help to reduce health disparity seen in minority prostate cancer patients. Recently, Dr Reddy’s group decoded non-coding DNA and it’s non-coding RNA and discovered novel tumor suppressors which will revolutionize tthe landscape of biology, diagnosis and therapy (In press, 2017, www.reddyesp.com ).