PostDoc

In my current post doctoral fellowship research I focus on human population genetics and the application of the background genetic information in association studies of important human diseases, with a particular focus on prostate cancer in men of African descent. I am particularly interested in studies examining the genomic ancestry of African-Americans, who represent an admixed population with African, European, and Native American ancestry. This work began with an assessment of the population structure of African Americans from Philadelphia using both uniparentally inherited markers (mtDNA, NRY) and autosomal ancestry informative markers. In this work, I have investigated the genomic contribution of maternal and paternal European admixture, genomic ancestry within African populations, and the extent to which populations of African Americans from various parts of Americas differ in both levels of admixture and how this can potentially influence subsequent case-control association studies. In the next phase of this research I am currently applying the results of this genomic analysis to correct for population stratification in a study to associate prostate cancer outcome and severity with SNPs related to miRNAs and telomere maintenance in a sample of men of African descent.

Ph.D.

My Ph.D. dissertation is entitled “Molecular Beacons for Cancer Treatment and Detection”. It can be conceptually divided into three parts – biodistribution, apoptosis, and imaging of mRNAs or enzymes associated with cancer. The first focuses on the different aspects of drug biodistribution – receptor-mediated or non-specific cellular delivery and the availability of drugs administered through iv injection. One goal of this research is to solve a common problem for many blood-circulating drugs that are intended to reach a specific target (in our case a tumor) to be lost in organs like liver, spleen or kidney. The second project focuses on inducing and imaging apoptosis via the mitochondrial pathway. Apoptosis is a fascinating phenomenon that is responsible for maintaining homeostasis in virtually every multicellular organism by eliminating the unwanted or compromised cells, but it is also a “hard nut to crack”. Its complex activation and inhibition pathways and the non-linearity of its progress draws a complicated picture when one wants to induce, detect, and image apoptosis.  The third theme serves as a method of visualizing the biodistribution and apoptosis and goes further in that the cells are not only visualized but also killed in this process. All three themes have something in common –  molecular beacons. For these beacons, a slight alteration in the structure (using a porphyrin-based photosensitizing molecule instead of a plain fluorescent dye) transforms the molecular beacons into “killer beacons” that can be used not only as a fluorescent tool for understanding biodistribution, apoptosis and cancer but also as a means of killing the target cancer cells by inducing cell death, once specifically delivered inside these cells and activated by light. The details of this research are covered in the articles that I have made available in the html version of my CV.  For an overview of this work, see in particular my reviews here and here.