Dissecting and Targeting Metastatic Drivers in Osteosarcoma

Metastatic osteosarcoma remains a major clinical challenge, highlighting the need to better understand the molecular mechanisms that drive disease progression. In this talk, Moreno will present the use of an in vivo CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) screen to identify genes that promote osteosarcoma progression. She will focus on KLF5, a transcription factor that emerged as a key regulator in our studies, and discuss its potential as a therapeutic target for osteosarcoma.Marta Roman Moreno, PhD, is a postdoc fellow in the Sweet-Cordero Lab at UCSF. She has a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Granada in Spain, and an MSc and PhD in Biomedical Research from the University of Navarra (Spain). The key focus of her work is to define key regulators of metastasis in osteosarcoma and determine the vulnerabilities that can diminish the survival of metastatic cells. Using mouse models, cell lines derived from patient samples (PDXs) and pooled in vivo CRISPR screens, she has been able to identify several potential genetic vulnerabilities in the context of metastatic osteosarcoma.