WEBINAR: Lecture series Cancer Research: "Targeting DNA repair: from basic biology to clinical trials"- Prof Thomas Helleday

DNA damaging agents, i.e., radio- and chemotherapy, constitute the backbone for treatment of a wide variety of cancers and may result in complete cure from the disease. Here, I will give an overview on how DNA repair can be targeted using completely novel inhibitors and more specifically how cancer cells may require a specific DNA repair pathway to mediate survival to the high load of endogenous DNA damage. DNA repair inhibitors can be exploited in treatment of mutated cancers and here, I will present our pioneering work on using PARP inhibitors to selectively kill homologous recombination defective cancers and how this has been translated into the clinic. Furthermore, I will cover how to we identify novel targets using CRISPR-Cas9 and the difficulties of that approach. Novel targets emerging from our laboratory such as MTHFD° will be discussed in detail and the strategies to advance these as anti-cancer treatments in a precision medicine approach. Finally, I will discuss the complication of targeting DNA repair proteins with many functions.

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