Live Webinar: 27 January 2022, 4 pm CET
Organised by ECTS
Sponsored by Industry
Date & Time: 27 January 2022, 4 pm CET
Featuring: Marelise Eekhoff, Chaired by Geneviève Baujat & Carolina Maria Medina Gomez
Costs: Live & On-demand webinar is free for ECTS members and non-members, but a registration is required.
Format:
- 5 min introduction
- 25 min meet-the-expert presentation
- 30 min Q&A and Case discussion
Learning Objectives:
- To understand the background of the disease
- Being able to diagnose FOP
- To know which treatments are available or not available (yet)
“The ECTS Rare Bone Diseases Webinar – Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, Brussels, (Online), Belgium, 27/01/2022 has been accredited by the European Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (EACCME®) with 1 European CME credits (ECMEC®s).
Each medical specialist should claim only those credits that he/she actually spent in the educational activity, live or on-demand. To obtain your Certificate, you will be required to fill in a short feedback evaluation form.
Featuring Prof. Marelise Eekhoff
Marelise Eekhoff is an internist-endocrinologist, associate professor, working as a staff member at the Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Endocrinology of the University Medical Centers Amsterdam, location VU (VUmc), Amsterdam, the Netherlands since 2002.
She completed her internal medical education at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden, the Netherlands. She then worked for more than a year in the Intensive Care Unit, followed by her endocrinology studies at the Endocrinology Department of the LUMC in Leiden. In the same period, she conducted her thesis “Paget’s bone disease in the Netherlands: epidemiology, genetics and treatment” (PhD 2004).
Moderated by Dr Geneviève Baujat
Genevieve Baujat (MD, MSc), pediatrician by training, is clinical geneticist, consultant in the Centre of Reference for Skeletal Dysplasia, at the Imagine institute of Necker-Enfants malades Hospital, Paris, France. She is also member of the ERN BOND (Rare Bone Disease) and ICC (International Clinical Council on FOP). She has an active interest for skeletal dysplasia diagnosis (from antenatal period to adulthood) and pediatric management. She participates to several research projects through the Centre of Reference, including the development of databases and registries for better known epidemiology and natural history of skeletal conditions, and clinical trials for emergent therapies, including Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.
Moderated by Dr Carolina Maria Medina Gomez
Dr Carolina Medina Gomez is a postdoctoral researcher at the Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands and current member of the ECTS academy. She obtained her PhD in 2016 and was awarded multiple recognitions including the New Investigator award by ECTS, ASBMR and ICBBH. Her work in genetic epidemiology in admixed populations gave her the opportunity to visit the Children Hospital of Philadelphia financed by the European Union. She is the main genetic analysts of the ErasmusMC cohorts and has led many projects within the GEFOS/GENOMOS consortium. Her findings have contributed to underscore the importance of molecules such as WNT16 in bone biology. Her work is at the forefront of cutting-edge methods in genomics (including not only genetic data but also transcriptomics). She has now extended her research to include the microbiome and has a lead role in the MiBioGen consortium trying to bring together genetic, genomic and gut microbiome data.
Abstract
Breast cancer cells frequently disseminate to the bone marrow, where they may either enter a dormant state or colonize the bone and induce osteolysis. The mechanisms that regulate tumor cell entry and exit from dormancy in the bone are not well understood, but several factors have been identified. Previous work from our group found that leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR) promotes tumor dormancy when expressed on bone-disseminated tumor cells and that loss of LIFR enables otherwise dormant tumor cells to colonize the bone. Our lab has therefore examined how LIFR expression is regulated in breast cancer cells, with the hope that understanding its regulation might provide novel avenues to therapeutically target dormant disseminated tumor cells. Through these efforts we have found that LIFR is epigenetically regulated, and that histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, which are FDA-approved for several blood cancers, stimulate LIFR expression on breast cancer cells from all subtypes. This finding presents an interesting therapeutic opportunity to explore whether HDAC inhibitors may be used to promote a chronic state of tumor dormancy and prevent recurrence in bone. Our findings suggest that this may be feasible, but that the effects of histone deacetylase inhibitors on bone remodeling profoundly impact tumor colonization and must be combined with appropriate anti-resorptive therapies.