Darren Tan, a recent graduate from the CSI Ph.D. Graduate Scholarship program who was under the mentorship of Prof. Toshio Suda, was given the honor to present his work on the impact of PRMT5 inhibition on blood stem cells at this year’s American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting. Darren’s attendance at the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting was supported by the AACR Travel award, which he was awarded for his meritorious abstract at the Frontiers in Cancer Science Conference 2018.
This year’s AACR Annual Meeting was held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, USA from 29 March to 3 April 2019. The meeting brought together 21,000 attendees — cancer researchers, physician-scientists, industry scientists, prevention researchers, epidemiologist, patient advocates and other stakeholders— and featured the latest discoveries across all areas of cancer research from the top minds in institutions around the world.
At the meeting’s oral session on “Novel Approaches to Understand Cancer Stem Cells”, Darren presented his recently-published findings (Tan et al., Cell Rep. 2019 Feb 26; 26(9):2316-2328.e6) about how PRMT5 functions to modulate splicing for genome integrity and preserve proteostasis. Importantly, Darren’s well-received presentation highlighted potential therapeutic implications with the use of PRMT5 inhibitors; which are currently being developed for treatment of various solid tumors and blood cancers.
During the meeting, Darren acquired updates on recent breakthrough cancer therapies, as well as advances in immunotherapy, personalized medicine and global efforts to tackle cancer; which featured the plenary talk by CSI faculty Prof. Teh Bin Tean on the genomics and epigenomics of cholangiocarcinoma. In addition, Darren also had the opportunity to engage and exchange ideas with fellow cancer researchers and experts in the field. Overall, the 2019 AACR annual meeting was a highly enriching and stimulating experience for Darren, and provided an exciting glimpse into the future of cancer treatment.
