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SUMMARY:Understand the anti-cancer STING pathway and harness it to treat m
 etastatic cancers
DTSTART:20210309T171500
DTEND:20210309T183000
DTSTAMP:20260428T041559Z
UID:2db13c5a789189d7c909124ae0b4e13b475e9a2840b784a42097335a
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION: Dr. Lingyin Li is an assistant professor in the Biochemistr
 y Department at Stanford School of Medicine. She is also a fellow at the S
 tanford ChEM-H institute. She was born in 1981 in Xi’an\, the ancient ca
 pital city of China for many of the most important dynasties in the Chines
 e history and also where the terracotta warriors were uncovered. As a teen
 ager\, she was fascinated by Chinese history and literature until her sixt
 h-grade math teacher one day remarked: literature is for girls and math is
  for boys. At a rebellious age\, she shifted her focus to math\, physics\,
  and chemistry\, and eventually attended University of Science and Technol
 ogy of China. There she majored in Polymer Physics in the Chemistry and Ch
 emical Engineering Institute and earned a bachelor of engineering degree i
 n 2003.\nThe 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine honored the discovery of cancer 
 therapy that blocks adaptive immune checkpoints. These therapies are now c
 uring ~20% of previously considered terminally ill melanoma patients becau
 se melanomas are immunogeneic tumors heavily infiltrated by immune cells (
 also known as “hot tumors”). However\, they have not been effective in
  most cancers which are less immunogenic (also known as “cold tumors”)
 .\n\nThe innate immune STING (stimulator of interferon genes) pathway is n
 ow recognized as a central pathway in anti-cancer immunity because it sens
 es cytosolic double-stranded DNA (dsDNA)\, a hallmark of cancers due to th
 eir frequent erroneous chromosomal segregation. Upon sensing of cytosolic 
 dsDNA\, cyclic-GMP-AMP-synthase (cGAS) produces the second messenger 2’3
 ’-cyclic- GMP-AMP (cGAMP) in the cytosol\, which binds to and activates 
 its receptor STING. STING activation leads to production of type-I interfe
 rons\, a potent cytokine that then activates downstream immune responses a
 ginst cancer.\n\nMy lab has identified the role of cGAMP as an immunotrans
 mitter that alerts our immune system of cancer. We have also uncovered reg
 ulation mechanisms of extracellular cGAMP signaling including how it activ
 ates STING and its degradation enzyme and transporters. We identified ENPP
 1\, the dominant hydrolase of cGAMP\, as an innate immune checkpoint and i
 mportant target for cancer immunotherapy. We developed promising drug cand
 idates that one day may benefit patients with cold tumors that previously 
 do not respond to adaptive immune checkpoint blockers.
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STATUS:CONFIRMED
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