Fosfosegnalazione oncogenica nella leucemia

Maria Teresa Esposito, PhD, Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, School of Biosciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, terrà un seminiario alle ore 12.00 dal titolo "Exploring and exploiting the oncogenic phosphosignaling network in KMT2A-rearranged leukaemia".

Ospita il professor Lucio Pastore

Education & Research Topics

Maria Teresa graduated in Medical Biotechnologies and obtained in 2009 a PhD in Molecular Medicine from the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM)- University Federico II of Napoli (Italy), where she investigated the bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for gene and cell therapies under the supervision of prof Lucio Pastore. To pursue her interest in the biology of stem cells and the molecular events underlying their transformation in cancer stem cells, she joined as a postdoc the leukaemia and stem cell biology group led by Prof. Eric So at the Institute of Cancer Research and moved to King’s College London in 2010, when the group transferred there. There she studied the molecular pathways required for establishment and maintenance of Acute Myeloid leukaemia (AML) in vitro and in vivo, contributing to identify Beta Catenin as a mediator of drug resistance in a subtype of AML, known as KMT2A-rearranged AML. At King’s she also identified an unprecedented role for the homeodomain gene HOXA9 in DNA damage repair and as a mediator of PARP inhibitor resistance in KMT2A-r AML. In 2017 she was awarded the Leukaemia UK John Goldman Fellowship and started her independent research at the University of Roehampton. There, Maria Teresa’s group focused on exploring and exploiting protein phosphatases for the identification of new therapies for AML. This work has led to the discovery of Inhibitor 2 of protein Phosphatase PP2A (SET) as a regulator of KMT2A- transcriptional programme and as a new therapeutic target for AML. Maria Teresa joined the University of Surrey in September 2023 as a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, where she continues her research to understand the role of SET in leukemic and cancer stem cells.