Thiruvengadam Arumugam

Thiruvengadam Arumugam
Department of Cancer Biology
University of Texas, USA

Biography

The goal of his research is to improve the treatment of pancreatic cancer and better patient outcome from this aggressive cancer. Resistance to chemo and radiotherapy is one of the major problems in pancreatic cancer management. Gemcitabine is the standard chemotherapy for this cancer and it has very meager benefits initially, and after that this drug is completely ineffective. His recent study showed that most of the pancreatic cancer cells lines are resistance to gemcitabine and other drugs, suggesting resistant mechanism is global. Resistant cells has mesenchymal phenotype, suggested EMT (Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition) is one of the phenomena behind the drug resistance. His another approach to understand the drug resistance is identifying the gene expression that will be induced after gemcitabine treatment, this study revealed number of cell cycle regulator, de-toxifying molecules, anti-apoptotic molecules and also lots of novel genes that was not reported elsewhere and related to cancer stem cell survival. He is extending this study further with patient tissue xenograft, aiming to personalized medicine. Another focus of his research is to develop blocker for S100-RAGE interactions. This molecule plays a crucial role in tumor growth, angiogenesis, metastasis and also drug resistance. RAGE is a central mediator of inflammation in tumor tissue, vascular, neuronal, renal complications and other pathological conditions. He engaged in developing novel small peptide to block this RAGE mediated pathological function. Apart from my laboratory research he is also interested in optical imaging for tumor growth, metastasis and gene delivery.