Cancer and Noncoding RNAs

Dr. Chakrabarti earned his PhD from the City University of New York. He conducted postdoctoral training at University of Rochester, New York; the Institute of Theoretical Science in Eugene, Oregon; and the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Currently he is a Senior Lecturer at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) in Kolkata, India and a Principle Investigator at Gyanxet-Beta, a commercial lab which develops tools and resources for RNA bioinformatics. Dr. Chakrabarti’s research areas include the role of noncoding RNAs in human disease, specifically in viral infections and head and neck cancer, as well as stem cells and pluripotency and the development of bioinformatics tools for analyzing noncoding RNAs. He has more than fifteen years of research experience in epigenetics, focusing on noncoding RNAs, and more than twenty-five years teaching experience at IACS. In addition to his teaching and research, Dr. Chakrabarti has published more than fifty scientific papers in peer reviewed journals and has served on the editorial boards of Scientific Reports, Bioinformatics, Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, Nucleic Acids Research, DNA Research, Human Mutations, PLOS Computational Biology, and BMC Genomics. His lab at IACS has collaborated on epigenetic research with labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Georgia, Stanford University, and the University of Bielefeld, among others. Since 2010 Sanga Mitra has served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) in Kolkata, India, under the mentorship of her PhD advisor, Jayprokas Chakrabarti. Her research areas within the Computational Biology group at IACS include microarray and RNA-Sequencing data analysis, histone modifications, head and neck cancer, and tRNA gene annotation. She holds an M.S. in Bioinformatics and has recently submitted her PhD dissertation, “Computational Genomics and miRNomics of Cancer.” Sanga Mitra has also presented on her research at genomics, cancer, and bioinformatics conferences around the world, most notably at BIT’s 3rd World DNA and Genome Day, New Horizons in Cancer Research, and the International Conference on Stem Cells and Cancer. She has published eight scientific papers to-date in peer reviewed journals including RNA and Transcription, Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, Scientific Reports, Genomic Medicine, and Cancer Biomarkers. Dr. Tollefsbol is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and a Senior Scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, Integrative Center for Aging Research, Nutrition Obesity Research Center, University Wide Microbiome Center, and the Comprehensive Diabetes Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is Director of the UAB Cell Senescence Culture Facility which he established in 1999. Dr. Tollefsbol trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Research Professor with members of the National Academy of Science at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. He earned doctorates in molecular biology and osteopathic medicine from the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center and his bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Houston. He has received prior funding from the NCI, NHLBI, NIMH and other federal institutes as well as the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) among many other sources.

1. Introduction

SECTION I: NON-CODING RNAs: FINE-TUNING CANCER 2. miRNA and Cancer: A Deadly Liaison? 3. Alteration of MicroRNA Biogenesis Pathways in Cancers 4. MicroRNAs In Exosomes in Cancer 5. Circulating miRNAs Incresaing the Risk of Cancer 6.  Long Noncoding RNAs as Cancer Biomarkers 7. The Balancing Act: Understanding MicroRNA and Competing Endogenous RNA Regulation in Cancer 8. PIWI-Interacting RNAs (piRNAs) and Cancer 9. Transfer RNA in Cancer 10. Dynamic Regulation of tRNA Modifications in Cancer 11. Circular RNA: A Novel Noncoding RNA in Cancer 12. Antisense RNA and Cancer 13. Implication of Other Noncoding RNAs in Cancer

SECTION 2: GENETIC DYSREGULATION OF NON-CODING RNA IN CANCER 14. Noncoding RNA Alterations in Cancer Molecular Pathways 15. Genetic Alteration of MicroRNA Affecting Cancer Pathways 16. Genetic Variations of Long Noncoding RNAs in Cancer

SECTION 3: EPIGENETIC EFFECT ON CANCER THROUGH NON-CODING RNAs 17. Cross Talk Between Noncoding RNAs and DNA Methylation and Demethylation in Cancer 18. Noncoding RNAs Act as a Chromatin Scaffold of Histone Modification Complexes in Cancer 19. Heterochromatin Modulation and PcG Control of Gene Expression Medicated by Noncoding RNA in Cancer 20. Epigenetic Control of MicroRNA Expression and Cancer 21. Implications of Long Noncoding RNAs in Cancer Epigenetics

SECTION 4: THERAPEUTIC IMPLICATIONS OF NON-CODING RNA IN CANCER 22. Long Noncoding RNAs: Insight Into Their Roles in Normal and Cancer Stem Cells 23. Clinical Relevance, Prognostic Potential, and Therapeutic Strategies of Noncoding RNAs in Cancer 24. Noncoding RNAs: Novel Targets in Anticancer Drug Development

SECTION 5: BIOINFORMATICS' DETECTION OF NON-CODING RNA IN CANCER 25. Cancer Noncoding RNA Discovery Through High-Throughput Sequencing 26. Noncoding RNAs as a Cauce of Cancer: Evidence From Genome-Wide Association Studies and Reverse Genetics 27. A Comparative Evaluation of Emerging Databases and Tools for Cancer Noncoding RNAs 28. Future Directions and Challenges Involved in Cancer Noncoding RNomics