Laboratory of Immunogenetics

Molecular Pathology Section

Victor V. Lobanenkov, Ph.D.

Chief, Molecular Pathology Section

Description of Research Program

Studies in the Molecular Pathology Section center on the activities of two proteins, CTCF and BORIS, and their roles in normal biology and cancer. CTCF is a ubiquitous, 11-zinc-finger DNA-binding protein involved in transcriptional regulation, reading of imprinted sites, X chromosome inactivation, and enhancer blocking/insulator function.

BORIS is a paralogous gene that carries the same DNA binding domain as CTCF but is normally expressed only in spermatocytes. In cancer, CTCF appears to function as a tumor suppressor gene. BORIS is aberrantly expressed in many cancers and is thus a cancer/testis gene and a possible target for immunotherapy. Approaches from cell and molecular biology as well as transgenic and knockout mice are used to probe the functions of these uniquely paired proteins.

Selected Recent Publications

(View list in PubMed.)

Suzuki T, Kosaka-Suzuki N, Pack S, Shin DM, Yoon J, Abdullaev Z, Pugacheva E, Morse HC 3rd, Loukinov D, Lobanenkov V. Expression of a testis-specific form of Gal3st1 (CST), a gene essential for spermatogenesis, is regulated by the CTCF paralogous gene BORIS. Mol Cell Biol. 2010 May;30(10):2473-84.

Ohlsson R, Lobanenkov V, Klenova E. Does CTCF mediate between nuclear organization and gene expression? Bioessays. 2010 Jan;32(1):37-50.

Bougel S, Renaud S, Braunschweig R, Loukinov D, Morse HC 3rd, Bosman FT, Lobanenkov V, Benhattar J. PAX5 activates the transcription of the human telomerase reverse transcriptase gene in B cells. J Pathol. 2010 Jan;220(1):87-96.

Smith IM, Glazer CA, Mithani SK, Ochs MF, Sun W, Bhan S, Vostrov A, Abdullaev Z, Lobanenkov V, Gray A, Liu C, Chang SS, Ostrow KL, Westra WH, Begum S, Dhara M, Califano J. Coordinated activation of candidate proto-oncogenes and cancer testes antigens via promoter demethylation in head and neck cancer and lung cancer. PLoS One. 2009;4(3):e4961.

Smith ST, Wickramasinghe P, Olson A, Loukinov D, Lin L, Deng J, Xiong Y, Rux J, Sachidanandam R, Sun H, Lobanenkov V, Zhou J. Genome wide ChIP-chip analyses reveal important roles for CTCF in Drosophila genome organization. Dev Biol. 2009 Apr 15;328(2):518-28.

Kim JH, Ebersole T, Kouprina N, Noskov VN, Ohzeki J, Masumoto H, Mravinac B, Sullivan BA, Pavlicek A, Dovat S, Pack SD, Kwon YW, Flanagan PT, Loukinov D, Lobanenkov V, Larionov V. Human gamma-satellite DNA maintains open chromatin structure and protects a transgene from epigenetic silencing. Genome Res. 2009 Apr;19(4):533-44.

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