The Esquela Kerscher Lab

Welcome to the (Esquela) Kerscher Lab! The major goal of our research is to develop novel RNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics for aggressive forms of human cancer, particularly urologic cancers. My laboratory specifically focuses on an abundant class of noncoding RNAs, called microRNAs (miRNAs), and determines how they influence cancer progression pathways when misexpressed. Cancer is marked by uncontrolled proliferation and inappropriate survival of damaged cells in the body. Interestingly, many processes used to direct the proper growth, differentiation, and cell death of tissues in the developing embryo, are identical to the genetic pathways that are perturbed in the cancerous state. My laboratory is very interested in studying how miRNAs control developmental events and how this relates to cancer progression. 

• Our lab employs mouse models, immortalized human cell lines and human specimens banked in the EVMS biorepository to functionally characterize miRNAs found in our profiling screens that closely correlated in patients with advanced prostate cancer. Our work currently centers around members of the miR-888 cluster, a novel group of seven miRNAs that are elevated in prostate cancer patients with high-grade disease and control prostate cell proliferation, migration, invasion and colony formation in vitro and in vivo.  We are investigating if these oncomiRs could be developed as novel fluid-based biomarkers and antimiR therapeutics to treat metastatic prostate cancer. A new project in the laboratory is to study how glycosylation modifications can impact small noncoding RNA function and correlate with human prostate cancer progression.

• We also use the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), an organism easily grown and studied in the laboratory and amendable to genetic manipulation, to characterize miRNAs sharing high conservation across species (i.e. let-7 & lin-4 families).  The nematode is a powerful tool for gene discovery to identify targets regulated by these miRNA families that control cancer-associated processes.  Investigating the function of conserved miRNAs in both nematode and mammalian systems promises to reveal a novel class of cancer progression genes with immense clinical potential.