Date and time:

June 12, 4pm CEST, 10am EDT / June 13 12am AEST

Bio:

Dr. Navneet Dogra is an Assistant Professor in Pathology, Molecular, and Cell Based Medicine and a member of the Icahn Genomics Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY. Dogra laboratory is working on the emerging field of Extracellular vesicles, genomics, liquid biopsy, and gene delivery. Recently, our lab has made key discoveries in RNA "dark matter" found in EVs (Dogra et al. JEV 2024), which changes during disease progression. Prior to Mount Sinai, Dr. Dogra led research efforts at IBM research and Yale University to drive translational research in “liquid biopsy” and “drug delivery".

Affiliation:

Assistant Professor of Pathology, Molecular, and Cell Based Medicine,

Member of the Icahn Genomics Institute,

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY

Talk abstract:

EVs carry functional small RNAs, potentially serving as extracellular messengers and liquid-biopsy markers. In this study, we investigate the EV-associated small unannotated RNAs that arise from endogenous genes and are part of the genomic ‘dark matter’. We have named these novel EV-associated small RNAs as ‘EV-UGRsʼ or “EV-dark matter”. Here, we demonstrate that EV-dark matter RNAs are downregulated by ∼100 fold (FDR < 0.05) in the circulating blood EVs from aggressive prostate cancer subjects. Remarkably, the EV-dark matter expression signatures were regained (upregulated) after radical prostatectomy in the same follow-up patients. Although further validation in randomized clinical trials is required, this new class of EV-RNAs holds promise in liquid-biopsy by avoiding highly invasive biopsy procedures in several diseases.