Leena Latonen

Visiting Scientists Alumni
llatonen at ucsd.edu

Degrees

Ph.D., Cancer biology, University of Helsinki, Finland, 2003

Summary

Leena is a cell and cancer biologist. Her Ph.D. work focused on the regulation of p53 pathway in the cellular stress responses induced by DNA damage and proteotoxic stress. During her postdoctoral work she identified a nuclear stress response granule, the nucleolar aggresome, forming under inhibition of the proteasome and serving as a site of aggregation for many nuclear factors and poly-A RNA. Her interests continue to include the crosstalk between stress and cancer through regulation of key cancer-relevant transcription factors. Leena’s current work focuses on identifying novel disease mechanisms in prostate cancer. Her work includes studying the regulation of Androgen receptor (AR) and it’s downstream effectors, especially roles of non-coding AR target genes. She is also interested in development of computational tools for 3D tissue analysis and digital pathology of cancer. Based on a recently performed large scale proteomics on clinical prostate cancer samples, she has identified novel factors and pathways de-regulated prostate cancer. In Dr. Yeo’s lab, she is interested in the RNA binding functions of the newly identified prostate cancer-relevant factors.

Publications

  • Latonen L, Afyounian E, Jylhä A, Nättinen J, Aapola U, Annala M, Kivinummi KK, Tammela TLJ, Beuerman RW, Uusitalo H, Nykter M, Visakorpi T. Integrative proteomics in prostate cancer uncovers robustness against genomic and transcriptomic aberrations during disease progression. Nature Communications, 9:1176 (2018). doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03573-6

  • Ehteshami Bejnordi B, Veta M, Johannes van Diest P, van Ginneken B, Karssemeijer N, Litjens G, van der Laak JAWM; the CAMELYON16 Consortium, Hermsen M, Manson QF, Balkenhol M, Geessink O, Stathonikos N, van Dijk MC, Bult P, Beca F, Beck AH, Wang D, Khosla A, Gargeya R, Irshad H, Zhong A, Dou Q, Li Q, Chen H, Lin HJ, Heng PA, Haß C, Bruni E, Wong Q, Halici U, Öner MÜ, Cetin-Atalay R, Berseth M, Khvatkov V, Vylegzhanin A, Kraus O, Shaban M, Rajpoot N, Awan R, Sirinukunwattana K, Qaiser T, Tsang YW, Tellez D, Annuscheit J, Hufnagl P, Valkonen M, Kartasalo K, Latonen L, Ruusuvuori P, Liimatainen K, Albarqouni S, Mungal B, George A, Demirci S, Navab N, Watanabe S, Seno S, Takenaka Y, Matsuda H, Ahmady Phoulady H, Kovalev V, Kalinovsky A, Liauchuk V, Bueno G, Fernandez-Carrobles MM, Serrano I, Deniz O, Racoceanu D, Venâncio R. Diagnostic assessment of deep learning algorithms for detection of lymph node metastases in women with breast cancer. . JAMA 318:2199-2210 (2017). PMID: 29234806

  • * Latonen L, Scaravilli M, Gillen A, Hartikainen S, Zhang FP, Ruusuvuori P, Kujala P, Poutanen M, Visakorpi T. In vivo expression of miR-32 induces proliferation in prostate epithelium. American Journal of Pathology 187:2546-2557 (2017). PMID: 28827140

  • Valkonen M, Ruusuvuori P, Nykter M, Visakorpi T, Latonen L. Analysis of spatial heterogeneity in normal epithelium and preneoplastic alterations in mouse prostate tumor models Scientific Reports 7:44831 (2017). PMID: 28317907

  • Valkonen M, Kartasalo K, Liimatainen K, Nykter M, Latonen L, Ruusuvuori P. Metastasis detection from whole slide images using local features and random forests. Cytometry A 91:555-5659 (2017). PMID: 28426134 Latonen L, Leinonen KA, Grönlund T, Vessella RL, Tammela TLJ, Saramäki OR, Visakorpi T. Chromosomal amplification of 9p13.3 in prostate cancer. Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer 55:617-25 (2016). PMID: 27074291 Ylipää A, Kivinummi K, Kohvakka A, Annala M, Latonen L, Scaravilli M, Kartasalo K, Leppänen S-P, Karakurt S, Seppälä J, Yli-Harja O, Tammela TLJ, Zhang W, Visakorpi T, Nykter M. Transcriptome sequencing reveals PCAT5 - an ERG-regulated non-coding transcript in prostate cancer. Cancer Research 75:4026-31 (2015). PMID: 26282172

  • Jalava SE, Urbanucci A, Latonen L, Waltering KK, Sahu B, Jänne OA, Seppälä J, Lähdesmäki H, Tammela TLJ, Visakorpi T. Androgen-regulated miR-32 targets BTG2 and is overexpressed in castration-resistant prostate cancer. Oncogene, 31:4460-71 (2012). PMID: 22266859

  • Latonen L. Nucleolar aggresomes as counterparts of cytoplasmic aggresomes in proteotoxic stress: proteasome inhibitors induce nuclear ribonucleoprotein inclusions trapping several key factors of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. BioEssays 33, 386-395 (2011). PMID: 21425306

  • Latonen L, Moore HM, Bai B, Jäämaa S, Laiho M. Proteasome inhibitors induce nucleolar aggregation of proteasome target proteins and polyadenylated RNA by altering ubiquitin availability. Oncogene 30: 790-805 (2011). PMID: 20956947

  • Latonen L, Järvinen PM, Laiho M. Cytoskeleton-interacting LIM-domain protein CRP1 suppresses cell proliferation and protects from stress-induced cell death. Experimental Cell Research 314, 738-47 (2008). PMID: 18177859

  • Rahman R, Latonen L, Wiman KG. hTERT antagonizes p53-induced apoptosis independently of telomerase activity. Oncogene 24, 1320-7 (2005). PMID: 15608686 Latonen L, Laiho M. Cellular UV damage responses - functions of tumor suppressor p53. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 1755, 71-89 (2005). PMID: 15921859 Kurki S, Peltonen K, Latonen L, Kiviharju TM, Ojala PM, Meek D, Laiho M. Nucleolar protein NPM interacts with HDM2 and protects tumor suppressor protein p53 from HDM2-mediated degradation. Cancer Cell 5, 465-75 (2004). PMID: 15144954

  • Latonen L, Taya Y, Laiho M. UV-radiation induces dose-dependent regulation of p53 response and modulates p53-HDM2 interaction in human fibroblasts. Oncogene 20, 6784-6793 (2001). PMID: 11709713