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Dr. Juan Yakisich

Assistant Professor
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute
Department of Clinical Neuroscience R54
 

Brief Biography:


I have a degree in Medicine from the University of Buenos Aires (1994) with few years of clinical practice. I received a PhD degree in Neurology from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden in 2005. I had postdoctoral training at Dr. Geoffrey Kapler lab, Texas A&M University, USA between 2002 and 2008. Currently, I am Assistant Professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm Sweden.

My research interest is cancer and pharmacology with special emphasis in brain tumors (gliomas) but I’m also interested in other types of tumors. Gliomas are the most common brain tumor in adults and despite extensive basic and clinical research, the prognosis for patients carrying malignant glioma did not  improve significantly during the last 40 years. At present, the best alternative option for these patients are surgery + radiotherapy + chemotherapy but even with the best personalized regime only around 35 % of patients survive more than 5 years. The average prognosis is only 14 month. Thus, novel treatment strategies need to be developed to improve the prognosis of these patients. This also means we need to be innovative because the current anticancer development that includes preclinical anticancer drug screening has not produced any important breakthrough. In this area, as independent researcher since 2008, my group developed at the preclinical level, several novel concepts and strategies that may help to find better treatment for gliomas and possibly expand these ideas to other types of tumors. i) A novel endpoint parameter to evaluate anticancer drugs: We introduced the concept of Regrowth Concentration Zero (RC0) as complementary parameter to search for “pankiller” drugs ,  II) We postulated a  novel model of glioma biology that predicts that to cure cancer, all cancer cells should be eliminated at once. This model is in agreement with other models recently proposed in reviews such as the “complex system model”,  the “reprogramming model” and  a models of regulation of the Stem cell makers CD133,  iii) We Introduced the concept of “pankiller drugs” that in theory will kill all cancer cells and prevent tumor relapse. In this context we identified  two menadione-based combinations with pankiller activity, iv) We also developed a  novel two phase treatment strategy  that may prevent  tumor relapse (manuscript submitted) and v) a novel strategy to prevent metastasis (ongoing work) that can be important for other types of tumors we are also working (e.g. pediatric gliomas, lung cancer).

 

 
 

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In summary, I strongly support WebmedCentral and I am commited to contribute to this online journal as Editor, Reviewer and Author.