Griechische Wissenschaftler

From his homepage:

Dr. Efstathios S. Gonos, Director of Research IBRB/NHRF
Address:	National Hellenic Research Foundation (N.H.R.F.) Institute of Biological Research & Biotechnology (I.B.R.B.) 48 Vas. Constantinou Ave., Athens 11635, Greece
Tel.: / FAX	+30-210-7273756 / +30-210-7273677
e-mail:	sgonos@eie.gr

Stathis Gonos was born in Athens in 1963. He graduated from the Department of Pharmacy, University of Athens, Greece in 1984 and he obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow, G. Britain in 1989.

From 1989 to 1993 he worked as a Research Scientist at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London, G. Britain. Since 1994 he has been the group leader - Director of Research since 2002 - of the Programme ''Molecular and Cellular Ageing'' in NHRF/IBRB. The research activities of the Programme are focused on the genetic and environmental factors that are linked to human ageing and longevity and are financed by competitive research grants awarded by the European Union, the Hellenic General Secretariat of Research & Technology as well as by private sources. He has published research articles in eminent journals (Mol. Cell Biol., Cancer Res., J. Biol. Chem., Oncogene, Nucl. Acids Res., Free Rad. Biol. Med., Exp. Cell Res., Biochem. J. etc), he is author of several monographs and patents holder. He has been invited to give lectures at many international Conferences (UNESCO, FEBS, European Congress of Gerontology, EMBO, IUBMB, EuroConference, European Association of Cancer Research etc), he has been co-organizing the EMBO/FEBS Spetses Summer Schools since 1999 and has organized the 2nd EuroConference on ''Biological Ageing''.

Dr. Gonos has received fellowships from the University of Glasgow, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the Royal Society of G. Britain and was honored with the ''Hans Selye'' award. He teaches in the post-graduate courses of Hellenic Universities, he is a member of various Societies, a ''Senior expert'' of European Union in the thematic area of ''Study human development and the ageing process'', evaluator of several international organizations (European Union, UNESCO, Cancer Research U.K., Austrian Science Fund etc) and Editorial Board member of ''Experimental Gerontology'', ''Aging Cell'', ''Mechanisms of Ageing & Development'' and ''Biogerontology''.

Gonos describes his work:

Ageing and longevity of are two multifactorial biological phenomena whose knowledge at molecular level is still uncomplete. In order to determine whether cellular ageing is regulated by the expression of a set of genes, we have employed a clonal system of rat embryo fibroblast conditionally immortalised cell lines and we have cloned eight genes that associate with mammalian replicative senescence. RNA analysis has shown that the genes are overexpressed in several primary human and rat tissues undergoing in vitro ageing, as well as in human fibroblasts undergoing premature senescence after exposure into different stress inducing agents. Additional analysis suggests that the Apolipoprotein J/Clusterin gene confers cell survival signals and that the expression of the Fibronectin gene associates with in vivo ageing in skin fibroblasts. In a complementary approach we have compared several samples of healthy centenarians with control donors of different ages, in terms of tissue culture characteristics, proteolytic activities, telomeres shortening and gene expression levels. Interestingly, most of the centenarians samples have shown similar molecular and biochemical characteristics with the samples originated from the young rather than the elderly donors. Finally, we have employed differential screening techniques to these centenarian samples and we have isolated several candidate longevity genes

Recently Gonos and his team have found a way to lower cancer cell resistance to medical treatment in what could be a major step in treating a disease that kills more than six million people every year. The procedure, which only recently started testing on animals, could make chemotherapy more effective at significantly reduced dosages and eliminate many of its side effects.

The key lies in 'switching off' Apolipoprotein J, also known as clusterin or Apo J for short, a protein used by healthy and diseased cells alike as a shield against attacks, says Stathis Gonos, leader of the research team.

"Our research was looking at genetic and environmental factors related to aging, and that is how we found the function of Apo J in healthy cells is to act as a shield, or 'survival factor', against toxic factors in the environment," Gonos said.

"Our next step was to investigate whether Apo J has a similar function in cancer cells, and indeed saw that it retains the same function of defending cells, shielding them from e.g. chemotherapy prescribed by a doctor to treat cancer," he added.

Cells react to what they perceive as an assault with all the weapons they have, producing vast quantities of Apo J as a shield against the attack, be that an infection or an anti-cancer drug. "We used a new technology called RNA Interference to silence the expression of Apo J and saw that in the case of cancer cells they became a lot more fragile and this made it a lot easier to kill them with normal chemo," Gonos said.

"We had spectacular results even when using a tenth of the usual dosage," he added, "and this means that many of the side-effects of chemotherapy will likely disappear as we are able to reduce dosages."

Many patients undergoing chemotherapy experience anemia, nausea, hair loss or infection due to low blood cell counts. The Greek team, who are financed by the European Union, have submitted a global patent application in partnership with Canadian biotech firm OncoGeneX and scientists from the University of British Columbia. They have recently started animal trials at Vancouver General Hospital, with Gonos forecasting human trials to start in between three and five years.

According to data from the World Health Organization's World Cancer Report, in the year 2000 alone around 10 million people worldwide developed a malignant tumor and more than six million died of the disease.