Prof. Dr. Varisa Pongrakhananon

Prof. Dr. Varisa Pongrakhananon is a Professor at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chulalongkorn University. A pharmaceutical scientist specializing in cancer cell biology and pharmacology, her award-winning research focuses on microtubule dynamics, lung cancer metastasis, and novel target therapeutics.

Reprogramming Cancer through Integrative Omics and Computational Pharmacology: From Biomarker Discovery to Precision Targeting of Cellular Signaling

Cancer is a highly dynamic disease driven by complex molecular alterations that extend beyond genomic abnormalities to include changes in protein expression, post-translational modifications, and interconnected signalling networks. Understanding these molecular events requires an integrative approach capable of linking omics discoveries with functional mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities. In this lecture includes an integrated research framework that combines multi-omics technologies, functional biology, and computational pharmacology to accelerate biomarker discovery and precision therapeutic development in lung cancer. The presentation will demonstrate how transcriptomic and proteomic analyses identify clinically relevant biomarkers, using microtubule-associated proteins as examples of novel regulators of cancer progression. Functional studies further reveal how CAMSAP2 and CAMSAP3 orchestrate distinct signalling pathways controlling metastasis, autophagy, and angiogenesis, highlighting the importance of mechanistic validation beyond biomarker discovery. Building upon these findings, how quantitative acetylomics uncovers cancer-associated alterations in protein acetylation that cannot be explained by protein abundance alone will be discussed. Integrative proteomics further reveals dynamic changes in the acetylated proteome underlying lung cancer progression and identifies HDAC6 as a central regulator of protein acetylation, representing a promising therapeutic target. Finally, how computational pharmacology, including virtual screening, molecular docking, and structure-based drug discovery, accelerates the identification of novel HDAC6 inhibitors will be illustrated. Together, these studies demonstrate how integrating multi-omics, systems biology, and computational approaches enables the discovery of actionable signalling networks and advances the development of precision therapeutics for precision oncology.