Brief Profile

Address with pin code: RUBY JOHN ANTO

SCIENTIST E1, DIVISION OF CANCER BIOLOGY

RAJIV GANDHI CENTRE FOR BIOTECHNOLOGY

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM-695014, KERALA

Telephone No: 0471-2341716: Fax: 0471- 2348096

I did PhD in Amala Cancer Research Centre under Dr. Ramadasan Kuttan and joined Rajiv Gandhi Centre in 1996 where I have been focusing on the signal transduction pathways and regulatory mechanisms involved in apoptosis. We observed that cells over expressing NF-B resist curcumin-induced apoptosis (Anto et al, 2000, J. Biol. Chem. 275, 15601-604). In 2000 I was fortunate enough to join Dr. Bharat Aggarwal’s lab in M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas where we found that leukemic cells over expressing Bcl2 and BclxL also resist curcumin-induced apoptosis (Anto et al, 2002a, Carcinogenesis, 23, 143-150). From the same lab we also observed that cigarette smoke condensate activate NF-B (Anto et al, 2002b, Carcinogenesis23, 1511-1518). After coming back from US I studied the role of NF-B in Epidermal growth factor (EGF) induced apoptosis of human vulval cells and observed that down regulation of NF-B sensitizes these cells to apoptosis induced by Epidermal growth factor (Anto et al, 2003, J. Biol. Chem. 278, 25490-98) I was also in involved in the studies which reported that Emodin (Srinivas et al, 2003, European.J.Pharmacol. 473, 117-25) and Allicin (Oommen et al, 2004, European.J.Pharmacol. 485,97-103) induce apoptosis of cervical cancer cells. In another study we observed that the cervical cancer cells HeLa and SiHa vary in their sensitivity towards TGF-b (Maliekal et al, 2004, J. Bio. Chem 279: 36287-36292). These observations motivated us to study the role of antiapoptotic factors in sensitizing conventional chemotherapeutic drugs. We found out a combination of Taxol and curcumin, which will bring about almost the same effect of double the amount of taxol when used alone, in cervical cancer cells. The mechanism of action of this synergistic effect has been published recently (Smitha et al, 2005, J. Bio. Chem 280: 6301-6308). In vivo studies are in progress using mouse cervical cancer model.