Association between COX-2 gene polymorphisms and head and neck cancers risk in a Chinese Han population

3^rd World Congress on Cancer Science & Therapy

October 21-23, 2013 DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Francisco Airport, CA, USA

Yu-Ming Niu, Hua Yuan, Ming Shen, Hui-Zhang Li, Yuan-Yuan Hu and Ning Chen

Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

Recent findings have revealed that a wide range of cancer therapeutic agents activate autophagy, a process that often functions as a pro-survival ("self-cleaning") mechanism responsible for limited efficacy of and resistance to such agents. However, because autophagy can act as a ?double-edged sword? in cancer (e.g., in addition to its cytoprotective actions, excessive autophagy can also trigger cell death), whether autophagy should be inhibited or activated in cancer treatment has become the subject of considerable debate. Currently, it is widely accepted that the mechanisms by which autophagy is perturbed may determine the outcome of autophagy-targeting therapies. This lecture will discuss a variety of issues and challenges related to current autophagy-targeting therapeutic strategies. It will then introduce a novel approach targeting the cargo-loading process of selective autophagy. The net effect of this strategy is to disable cargo loading into autophagosomes, a critical step required for efficient removal of misfolded or unfolded proteins by selective autophagy through fusion with lysosomes. It will also present a novel cross-talk between autophagy and apoptosis, via which a cytoprotective autophagic resopnse can be switched to pro-death response to benefit various cancer therapies. These new findings will provide a theoretical basis for an entirely new autophagy-directed strategy which could be immediately translatable to the treatment of human cancers.

Biography :

Yun Dai has studied cancer cell biology and targeted therapy for 12+ years, during which he has authored about 70 peer-reviewed papers. He has served on the editorial boards for the Journal of Cancer Research & Therapy and as a peer-reviewer for Cancer Biology & Therapy, Cancer Research, Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Molecular Pharmacology, PLoS ONE, Cell Proliferation, Food and Chemical Toxicology, Current Cancer Drug Targets, and Cancer Letter. He is an active member of the American Association for Cancer Research and American Society of Hematology, and an executive committee member of US-Chinese Anti-Cancer Association.