Seminar - Intracellular and extracellular nitric oxide transport and its role in M1 and M2 macrophages as a novel mechanism involved in tumor cell killing or promotion
Despite that NO is a small, diatomic gas, believed to be freely-diffusible in cells, its contrasting anti- and pro-tumour effects in macrophages may be explained by our concept that it is not freely diffusible. In fact, it may be tightly regulated by NO-storage and -transport proteins, i.e., glutathione-S-transferase-P1 (GSTP1) and multidrug resistance-associated protein 1 (MRP1). The pharmacology of this novel system is unclear and requires dissection to elucidate targets that can be therapeutically-exploited.
This seminar is dedicated to the late Dr. Prem Ponka.
Speaker biography:
Professor Des Richardson holds the Chair of Cancer Cell Biology at the University of Sydney, Australia, and is a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia Senior Principal Research Fellow. He is a multi-disciplinary pharmacologist whose career has spanned metabolism, medicinal chemistry, drug design/development/commercialization, cancer biology, and neurobiology.
He has published 421 articles, reviews, patents, chapters etc., over his career with >93% as first, senior or corresponding author (H-index: 88; >32,400).
He is Executive Editor of BBA-General Subjects and has served on the Ed. Boards of 45 journals, including: JBC, Antioxidants Redox Signaling, Biochem. J., J. Clin. Pathology (Assoc. Ed.), Int. J. Biochem. Cell Biology – Molecules in Focus Editor (for 10 years), BBA-Mol Cell Res, Mol. Pharmacol., Pharmacol. Res., BBA-Reviews on Cancer, etc.
As a major translational research achievement, he has developed the anti-cancer and anti-metastatic drug, DpC, which overcomes P-glycoprotein-mediated drug resistance and up-regulates the potent metastasis suppressor, NDRG1. This has led to commercialisation of DpC and the development of the international company, Oncochel Therapeutics LLC, USA and its Australian subsidiary, Oncochel Therapeutics Pty Ltd. Notably, DpC has entered multi-centre Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of advanced and resistant cancer. These anti-cancer drugs target the lysosome via the P-glycoprotein transporter.
