31
EVENT FORMAT
Lecture
2020
Januar y
12-2 3
Alumni Lecture Series
DESCRIPTION
Liquid biopsies: Promises and challenges in the new era of precision oncology by Dimitrios Kleftogiannis
The key objective of precision oncology is to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment. So far, tissue biopsies are widely used to
characterize tumor genomes and to track metastatic expansion. From a clinical point of view, analysis of tissue biopsy data is
used to guide clinical decisions and to deliver “optimized” cancer therapies. However, analysis of tissues biopsies (i.e., frequently
called “needle” biopsies) may not be representative of the entire tumor load (e.g., number of metastases and clone heterogeneity),
and very often treatment “tailoring” is limited by constraints on tissue collection and sampling frequency. The last couple of years,
thanks to recent advances in biotechnologies, attention is turning into liquid biopsies, which enable an analysis of tumor genomes
using bodily fluids such as blood (e.g., circulating tumor DNA found in plasma). Recent improvements in genomic and molecular
methods are expanding possible applications of circulating tumor DNA as an alternative to the conventional needle biopsies. To
this end, several studies have demonstrated the potentials of liquid biopsies to deliver early detection of cancer, more compre-
hensive tumor characterization, and improved monitoring of cancer patients in real-time. This is a new and exciting research field,
which has opened a new era in cancer healthcare and precision oncology. The aim of this lecture is to present recent progress
and challenges in liquid biopsies with applications in personalized cancer medicine.
Engineering collagen for wound healing by Eduardo Gorron
The project I am working now is the development of a system to produce recombinant collagen and strategies to engineer hu-
man collagen to enhance wound healing and other healing processes in the body. Collagen is a protein that consists of peptide
repeats, which results in a very regular triple helical formation. This allows us to shorten the protein and our approach is that it
could be engineered as a modular protein, being the modules the domains responsible for binding to different components of the extracellular
matrix such as fibronectin, heparin, metalloproteases, and cells via integrin binding domains. Such an approach can be employed to produce
Join us for the annual Alumni Lecture Series during WEP, a highlight in the University’s event calendar! We welcome the return
to KAUST of five alumni who will present highlights from their work in business, research, academia, industry, and innovation.
Brought to you by KAUST Alumni and the Enrichment Office.