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2017 Featured Talks » Understanding and Targeting Spliceosomal Gene Mutations in Cancer



Understanding and Targeting Spliceosomal Gene Mutations in Cancer


Silvia Buonamici, PhD
H3 Biomedicine

Part 1


Part 2








Silvia Buonamici, PhD
Director
H3 Biomedicine


Dr. Silvia Buonamici grew up in Italy where she completed her graduate training in Molecular Biology and Genetics. During last year of PhD studies, she decided to join Prof. Giuseppina Nucifora’s Laboratory at the University of Illinois in Chicago to study the function of Evi1 in leukemia and developed the first mouse model phenocoping the human disease. She continued to study the pathogenesis of leukemia in the laboratory of Iannis Aifantis where she identified the role of the chemokine receptor CCR7 in the migration of leukemic Notch1 mutant cells across the blood brain barrier. Silvia started her own lab in the fall of 2009 at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in the oncology department where she developed the Hedgehog signaling pathway inhibitor LDE225 (Odomzo) that recently received the FDA approval for locally advanced basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. During her period at Novartis, she identified the allosteric inhibitor of BCR-ABL, ABL001 currently being tested in patients with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia. In 2011, she joined H3 Biomedicine, a new cancer genomics based drug discovery company where she began to study the mechanism of action of the spliceosome mutations identified in leukemia the same year. She is now the Director of the Target Biology and Translational Research department involved in the development of the spliceosome modulator currently in a phase I clinical trial. In addition her department is involved in the preclinical development of several oncology drugs. In her spare time, she enjoys to spending time with her family, playing with her two kids and exercising.