Elena V. Gostjeva from MIT BOSTON will present an informal seminar:

"Cancer stem cells, radio- and chemo- resistance and how to kill them', or just to talk science."

She has also rising interest to talk about cells (prokaryotic, eukaryotic, resistance).

This event will take place Friday 21 October, 11h30-12h30, at CRI -Cochin, room 2006.

Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires
Faculté de Médecine Paris Descartes
24 rue du faubourg Saint Jacques
75014 Paris

E. Gostjeva's biography
Source : http://mit.edu/ans/www/seminar3.html

Elena V. Gostjeva is a Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Engineering, MIT and also at the Institute of Biotechnology, Kiev, Ukraine. She graduated from Vavilov's Institute of General Genetics (Moskow, USSR) in 1986 and joined the "Genetic Risk Assessment" group, Radiobiological Expedition in Chernobyl' (Ukraine) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Dr. Gostjeva studied the consequences of radiation exposure on human health in contaminated areas of the Ukraine and accepted the offer to become head of the "Genetic Risk Assessment" group at Kiev Polytechnical Institute in 1995. She originally developed her quantitative image cytometry methods to detect chromosomal aberrations induced by long-term low dose radiation in plants, animals and humans. These methods were later applied at MIT for the analysis of origin of chromosomal instability in human colon adenocarcinomas and finding that the stem cells of organogenesis and carcinogenesis have a peculiar mode of DNA replication when divide symmetrically and aymmetrically.

Together with Prof. William Thilly, whom she met in Stockholm, 1996 working for Swedish Radiation Protection Instutute and married in 1997 and moved to USA, she has developed a "juvenile stem cell mutator" hypothesis regarding the timing and cellular location of tumor initiation mutations. She is organizing collaborations to develop novel cancer treatments aimed at eradication of cancer stem cells that curiously resistant to radiotherapy. The latter is a present collaboration with Prof. Jackie Yanch, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.