Cancer Biology and Therapeutics Lab

On Daffodil Day, thousands of volunteers take to the streets selling flowers and daffodil pins to raise monies for the Irish Cancer Society.  Daffodil day was launched on Feb. 1st 2019 with BREAST-PREDICT an Irish Cancer Society Collaborative Research Centre represented by CBT lab members Dr. Arman Rahman and Emer Conroy

Congratulations to PhD student Flavia Genua who has been awarded € 1300 under COST Action CA17118 Identifying Biomarkers Through Translational Research for Prevention and Stratification of Colorectal Cancer  (TRANSCOLONCAN.Eu)  for a three – week STSM (short term scientific mission …EU speak) to the  lab of Dr Alessio  Naccarati Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine , Turin, “Relationship between microbes and microRNAs in colorectal carcinogenesis”.

The CBT lab entered the Conway Christmas decoration competition to build a Christmas tree or decoration (anything Christmassy!) made out of lab materials and as pointed out by Dr. Prencipe the most valuable lab materials are the people.  Jingles cells was a hit with Prof. Gallagher as lead angel and the CBT lab were joint winners of the competition.

Dr Seodhna Lynch (left) was delighted to be shortlisted for an oral presentation for the UCD Allergan Innovation Award at the UCD Conway Festival in October 2018. Her talk was on the investigation of miRNA Expression and their potential prognostic utility as biomarkers in prostate cancer.

Congratulations to Eve O’Reilly PhD student (right) who was awarded a prize for her poster presentation at the UCD Conway Festival of Research 2018. The poster, titled ‘Effects of Cannabidiol on Prostate Cancer Cell Viability and Proliferation’, describes the phenotypic effects of a non-psychoactive cannabinoid compound in cell line models of prostate cancer.

Dr. Arman Raman and Claudia Aura MD, represent the CBT lab at the 5 year celebration of BREAST-PREDICT.  One of the Irish Cancer Society’s greatest achievements over the past five years has been Breast-Predict, the country’s first collaborative cancer research centre.   The CBT group and Prof. William Gallagher are delighted to be a part of this success.

Dr. Arman Rahman and Dr. Seodhna Lynch were delighted to be selected for a poster presentation at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2018 in Chicago, USA. Seodhna’s poster was titled ‘Investigation of miR-205 expression and its methylation status in prostate cancer’.  Seodhna was awarded the UCD Seed Funding Dissemination and Outputs Travel Award 2018 (€2,500) to attend and present at this prestigious, international conference.  Arman’s poster was titled ‘Refining Treatment Recommendations for Lymph Node-Negative Breast Cancer Patients Using a Novel Protein-based Prognostic Signature: The OncoMasTR Assay’.

Congratulations to PhD student Romina Silva for being awarded two travel grants in 2018:

EACR bursary (700€), which was used to attend the EACR conference in Amsterdam (July 2018). She presented her work, entitled “Evaluating Liquid Biopsies for Methylomic Profiling of Prostate Cancer”, in the poster session.

Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds travel grant (1,300€), which was used to attend the EMBL course of Liquid Biopsies in Heidelberg. This was an essential training course for Romina, as liquid biopsies is a key aspect of her PhD project.

21st March: Daffodil Day bake sale – An incredible €823 euro was raised! Congratulations to all involved for a fabulous effort.

Alex successfully applied for an Irish Cancer Society international mobility element, which afforded her the opportunity to spend three months in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. She was mentored by an expert in the field of Epigenetics, Prof John Greally, in order to learn how to computationally catalogue enhancer activity in prostate cancer.

Lucianne Herda,  Fiona Lanigan (BREAST PREDICT) and Arman  Rahman (OPTi-PREDICT) help launch of Daffodil Day at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin.  Daffodil day takes place very year to help raise money for The Irish Cancer Society.  This year it takes place on March 23rd and the CBT lab and BREAST PREDICT team will have their annual bake sale.