The Department of Physiology
is pleased to announce
Associate Professor
Preventative Medicine and Dermatology
will be presenting a seminar titled
“Developing new methods for overcoming melanoma drug resistance”
Thursday, April 10, 2025
3:30 – 5:00 pm
Cancer Research Building Auditorium
19 S. Manassas St. Room 114. Refreshments will be provided.
SUMMARY:
Melanoma is the deadliest skin cancer with only 21 months of median survival for distant disease, even after the FDA approval of a series of targeted and immune therapies. As BRAF mutations are found in ~60% of melanoma tumors, BRAF inhibitors (including MEK inhibitors, i.e., BRAFi + MEKi) exhibit excellent efficacy but the responses do not last. We aim to find combination therapy methods that can deal with this problem. We identified luteolin as a candidate drug which showed great synergistic effect with BRAFi. The inhibitory effect is not through a canonical ROS pathway but through a seemingly direct degradation of BRAF protein.
BRIEF BIO:
Dr. Liu-Smith obtained her Ph.D degree in genetics in Iowa State University and later a M.S. degree in epidemiology at University of California Irvine School of Medicine. She utilizes a multidisciplinary approach in her melanoma research and has published and funded in both molecular and epidemiology research. The goal of her study is to tackle melanoma initiation, progression problems using molecular, epidemiology and genomics approach.
All attendees, please sign the sign-in sheet before entering the auditorium.