Events Calendar

USC Physical Sciences in Oncology Seminar Series

Speaker: Larry Smarr, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego

Talk Title: Tracking Immune Biomarkers and the Human Gut Microbiome: Inflammation, Crohn's Disease, and Colon Cancer

Abstract: Colon Cancer is the most common cancer among Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients and IBD is one of the three leading high-risk factors for Colon Cancer. In 2012 it was found, by using genetic sequencing of the gut microbiome, that Fusobacteria sequences were enriched in colorectal carcinomas (CRC). To explore this possible link between inflammation, gut microbes, and colon cancer I have turned my own body into a "genomic observatory." I have been tracking over 100 blood/stool biomarkers in my own body every few months for the last five years, with a focus on immune variables. Using key biomarkers and imaging technologies I diagnosed myself as having late-onset Crohn's Disease, one of the two forms of IBD. Besides obtaining one million SNPs of my human genome, I have collaborated with the J. Craig Venter Institute to metagenomically sequence my gut microbiome at three different times during a period of high inflammation. My microbiome was compared with 50 other subjects, sequenced by the NIH Human Microbiome Project--35 healthy and the remainer with IBD. I discovered that at the height of my inflammation (CRP~30), I had 8% relative abundance of Fusobacteria, 40x healthy subjects. Following antibiotic/corticosteroid therapy the Fusobacteria were reduced 90-fold. The next step is to move to high-throughput integrated personal "omics" to refine the host-microbiome dynamics. With these new tools of computationally-intensive omics, there is a hope that we will gain new insights into the pathogenisis of CRC.

Biography: USC was selected to establish a $16 million cancer research center as part of a new strategy against the disease by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and its National Cancer Institute. The new center is one of 12 in the nation to receive the designation. During the five-year initiative, the Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers will take new, nontraditional approaches to cancer research by studying the physical laws and principles of cancer; evolution and the evolutionary theory of cancer; information coding, decoding, transfer and translation in cancer; and ways to de-convolute cancer's complexity. As part of the outreach component of this grant, the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine is hosting a monthly seminar series.

Host: USC PSOC

More Information: USC-PSOC_MonthlySeminar.pdf

Location: Elaine Stevely Hoffman Medical Research Center (HMR) - Hastings Auditorium, 1st Floor

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Kristina Gerber