On Thursday (11.06) we will host dr hab. Paulina Podszywałow-Bartnicka (Pracownia Cytometrii, Instytut Nenckiego). Her lecture will be entitled: "RNA processing in response to stress and anti-cancer treatment". The lecture will take place at 3 p.m. in the CN lecture hall and it will be followed by a get together.

Abstract:

The major challenge in cancer therapy is the emergence of resistance. Cancer cells exploit stress-triggered mechanisms to ensure their survival under therapeutic pressure. Changes in gene expression support cell adaptation to altered conditions, but how stress modulates the coordination across multiple levels of RNA processing remains unclear. I will present outcomes of recent projects demonstrating that the co-transcriptional coupling of RNA processing steps is affected by anti-cancer therapeutic agents, thus characterizing the early response of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells treated with imatinib, a first-line drug. Implementing long-read sequencing of nascent RNA alongside short-read sequencing enabled the detection of transcriptional readthrough and associated events, such as alternative splicing and the generation of chimeric transcripts. Together, these findings reveal that RNA processing alterations occurring early after treatment initiation may anticipate the development of therapy resistance, long before it manifests clinically.