April 18^th at 12:00
On-site event
Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Spring 2024 program

Prof. Saverio Minucci, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Italy
PP2A as an integrator of cellular responses to genomic stress, and to a metabolically dynamic microenvironment
Host: Jukka Westermarck (jukwes@utu.fi)

Coffee and sandwich at 11:45, first come first served!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch in restaurant Mauno and discuss with Prof. Minucci after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Prof. Minucci  has an outstanding reputation in the field of cancer research. Since the beginning of his career, he focused his research activities on the study of deregulation of chromatin structure/function in cancer, aiming to the use of “potential drugs” interfering with chromatin modifying enzymes (histone deacetylases, DNA methyltransferases, histone demethylases) for clinical treatment of cancer patients. He contributed to several key discoveries in this area, that have shaped the field of cancer epigenetics, and the concept of epigenetic therapy of cancer. His practical interest in drug discovery and translation of basic research into application led him to be scientific co-founder of the Italian biotechnological and biopharmaceutical holding company Genextra Spa.

Selected publications

Cazzoli R, Romeo F, Pallavicini I, Peri S, Romanenghi M, Pérez-Valencia JA, Hagag E, Ferrucci F, Elgendy M, Vittorio O, Pece S, Foiani M, Westermarck J, Minucci S. 2023. Endogenous PP2A inhibitor CIP2A degradation by chaperone-mediated autophagy contributes to the antitumor effect of mitochondrial complex I inhibition. Cell Rep. 2023 Jun 7;42(6):112616. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112616

Moretti S, Abdel-Aziz AK, Ceccacci E, Pallavicini I, Santoro F, de Thé H, Minucci S. 2022. Co-targeting leukemia-initiating cells and leukemia bulk leads to disease eradication. Leukemia. 2022 May;36(5):1306-1312. doi: 10.1038/s41375-022-01530-3

Nicosia L, Boffo FL, Ceccacci E, Conforti F, Pallavicini I, Bedin F, Ravasio R, Massignani E, Somervaille TCP, Minucci S, Bonaldi T. 2022. Pharmacological inhibition of LSD1 triggers myeloid differentiation by targeting GSE1 oncogenic functions in AML. Oncogene. 2022 Feb;41(6):878-894. doi: 10.1038/s41388-021-02123-7

Ravasio R, Ceccacci E, Nicosia L, Hosseini A, Rossi PL, Barozzi I, Fornasari L, Zuffo RD, Valente S, Fioravanti R, Mercurio C, Varasi M, Mattevi A, Mai A, Pavesi G, Bonaldi T, Minucci S. 2020. Targeting the scaffolding role of LSD1 (KDM1A) poises acute myeloid leukemia cells for retinoic acid-induced differentiation. Sci Adv. 2020 Apr 8;6(15):eaax2746. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax2746

Elgendy M, Cirò M, Hosseini A, Weiszmann J, Mazzarella L, Ferrari E, Cazzoli R, Curigliano G, DeCensi A, Bonanni B, Budillon A, Pelicci PG, Janssens V, Ogris M, Baccarini M, Lanfrancone L, Weckwerth W, Foiani M, Minucci S. 2019. Combination of Hypoglycemia and Metformin Impairs Tumor Metabolic Plasticity and Growth by Modulating the PP2A-GSK3β-MCL-1 Axis. Cancer Cell. 2019 May 13;35(5):798-815.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2019.03.007

General information

• You can download and save all the spring 2024 FoS-seminars to your calendar from here: https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Spring 2024 FoS image credits to Jenny Pessa: Transformed human breast epithelial HS578T cells (flattened), labelled with commercial fluorescent antibodies. Image acquired on 3i CSU-W1 Spinning disk with 40x objective.