20^th Euro-Global Summit on Cancer Therapy& Radiation Oncology August 28-29, 2017 Brussels, Belgium

Ahmed Alharery is a student at Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Mansoura University in his final year of Bachelor’s Degree. He is a Research Assistant at the faculty and at the Oncology Center of Mansoura University. Till now, he participated in four research projects. He is also the Ambassador of the European Students' Conference (ESC) which is being held in Berlin as well as being an Assistant to the president of the university. He established an association called Students Association for Cancer Research at Mansoura University and is the Vice Head of Education Committee of the International Veterinary Students Association (IVSA).

Breast cancer is one of the most worldwide spreading types of cancer and comes in the second grade after lung cancer in causing death among women. Due to the defects of the currently available cancer medications it had to generate a new era of highly effective medications that have minimal side effects and one of those new medications is the virotherapy which lately was admitted to be a new hopeful therapy for cancer patients. Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are natural or reformed viruses that can selectively, effectually and definitely invade malignant cells and kill them in vivo and in vitro via various mechanisms including direct lysis, apoptosis, autophagy, toxic protein expression, necrosis, and immune response stimulation. Our study will focus on Newcastle disease virus (NDV) which destroys the cancer cells by two mechanisms (i) Immunostimulatory mechanism. (ii) Oncolytic mechanism. LaSota strain, a low virulence attenuated lentogenic strain, was revealed to induce the immune system against the cancer cells when it's administrated in form of vaccination but its oncolytic activity is not clear yet, but some studies mentioned that it's an oncolytic virus. In this study we will test the possible oncolytic properties of NDV LaSota strain which is a lentogenic (low virulent) commercially available NDV vaccine in Egypt and is widely used as avian vaccine NDV infection. The murine mammary carcinoma cell line develops tumor when injected into the mammary fat pad of Balb/c mice and constitute an established model for preclinical drug testing. This model is appropriate for cancer immunotherapy research as the host is immune competent.

Veltri Anthony graduated in Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology. He has grown an interest in Cancer and Stem Cell Biology. In order to explore those research fields, he first joined the In Vivo Pharmacology Oncology Department at Thrombogenics. In order to expand his knowledge and skills in Stem Cells Research, he is pursuing a PhD in Stem Cells Biology at de Duve Institute. Under Dr. Wen-Hui Lien’s supervision, he is investigating the potential role of a non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway in the regulation of hair follicle stem cells.

Multipotent adult stem cells (SCs) can self-renew and generate tissue-specific progenies to replenish an entire tissue during homeostasis and upon injury. To sustain this function throughout organism’s life span, it is required to have a precise regulation between microenvironmental cues and intracellular signaling that balances SC quiescence and activation. Thus, investigating the underlying signaling pathways controlling this balance is fundamental to understand the regulation of SCs and tissue regeneration. Several signaling pathways have been indicated to regulate SC proliferation, differentiation and maintenance. Among those pathways, Wnt signaling is one of the major regulators across different adult SCs. However, while canonical Wnt/β-catenin pathway is broadly studied, the function of non-canonical Wnt pathways in adult SCs remains unclear. To unravel their unaddressed roles in SCs, we use murine hair follicles, which undergo cyclic bouts of growth, degeneration and rest, as a model to investigate the regulation of non-canonical Wnt signaling mediated by the tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 2 (Ror2) in hair follicle stem cells (HFSCs). We first examined Ror2 signaling activities in activated and quiescent HFSCs, and found elevation of Ror2 expression levels and its downstream JNK activity in activated HFSCs. To delineate Ror2-dependent regulation in HFSCs, we then generated a HFSC-specific conditional knockout (cKO) mouse line for Ror2, and characterized its functional significance in the regulation of HFSC behaviors. In doing so, we found deletion of Ror2 in activated HFSCs caused a delay of HFSC activation and hair cycle entry. By analysing purified Ror2 cKO HFSCs, we uncovered that cultured Ror2 cKO HFSCs displayed reduced self-renewal capacity and eventually underwent differentiation. More interestingly, using a double mutant strategy, we identified the collaborative effect of Ror2 and β-catenin in hair follicle fate determination. As a summary, our results together unravel previously unidentified function of Ror2-mediated signaling in regulation of HFSCs.