Generation of modular pathway reporter plasmids

Nawid Shayganfar
2017 unpublished
Cancer is still one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Therefore, the pharma-ceutical industry and independent research groups try to get a better understanding of this disease. Research has shown that pathways, which normally play an important role in tissue homeostasis and embryonic development, are deregulated in cancer. Ab-errations in these signal transduction cascades are associated to tumor initiation, pro-gression, therapy resistance and the controversially discussed tumor
more » ... lation of cancer stem cells. Our project focused on the generation of a MuLE-system-based re-porter construct. This construct has the ability to transduce malignant cells and dynam-ically visualize the activity of the developmental pathways Wnt, Hedgehog and Notch. This thesis is an example for how to build such a reporter. It illustrates the stepwise building of each needed component. The results show how workflows can look like and how obstacles, which can occur during the construction of a such a system, can be prevented and circumvented. This reporter can enable us to get a deeper under-standing of the role of developmental pathway signaling in cancer. Various applica-tions of the system are intended, e.g. cell sorting, CSC identification, measurement of pathway interplays and supporting drug development. Altogether, the constructed, de-velopmental pathway specific vectors will hopefully brighten our understanding of cancer and will therefore facilitate the development of novel therapies.
doi:10.25365/thesis.48342 fatcat:r6ldilgkfbdbnjvmkbtr6et5ze