Overview
Dr Leandro Castellano's laboratory focuses on the role of various species of non-coding RNAs in cancer. The laboratory performs different type of RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) applications including small RNA-seq, RNA-seq, crosslinking and immunoprecipitation sequencing (CLIP-seq), RNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (RIP-seq) and ribosome profiling (Ribo-seq) to uncover the role and mechanism of action of novel non-coding RNA molecules in cancer and metastasis.

Particularly research that is currently performing in the laboratory focuses on:

-Identification of microRNA and long-noncoding RNAs involved in cancer using RNA-sequencing

-Involvement of the identified non-coding RNAs in proliferation, motility, invasion and stemness in vitro and in vivo

-Characterisation of the molecular mechanism of action of selected non-coding RNAs

-Investigation of the mechanism of interaction between AGO proteins, microRNAs and their targets in cancer using AGO immunoprecipitation followed by next generation sequencing of the protected fragments

-Characterisation of the prognostic and diagnostic potential of the selected non-coding RNAs using large cohort of cancer datasets

-Evaluation of the therapeutic potential of the selected non-coding RNAs