Physician Investigator (Cl) CCR Group C Monthly, Mass General Research Institute

Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School

Assistant Physician Hematology-Oncology, Massachusetts General Hospital

MD Harvard Medical School 2004

cancer; cancer biomarkers; gene transfer techniques; hematopoiesis; hematopoietic stem cells; liver cancer; microfluidics; non-coding rnas; pancreatic cancer; pluripotent stem cells; rnas; transgenes Pancreatic and liver cancers are highly lethal cancers where the vast majority of patients are diagnosed too late and conventional therapies have largely been ineffective, making early detection and novel drug targets greatly needed. Recently, a significant amount of “non-coding” repeat RNAs have been found to be produced in high amounts at the earliest stages of cancer development, but not in normal tissues. Interestingly, these satellite RNAs appear to activate a viral response program that appears to help cancers prevent immune cells from attacking them. The Ting Laboratory has been utilizing innovative microfluidic chip technologies to capture circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and have used satellite RNAs to develop novel blood based early detection biomarkers of cancer. In addition, we are uncovering how these repeat RNAs alter the immune response as a novel immunotherapy target.