Funded Investigators
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| Anthony Capobianco, Ph.D. | Alexander MacKerell, Ph.D. |
| University of Miami | University of Maryland |
Exploitation of the Notch Pathway to Develop Novel Anti-Cancer Therapeutic Agents
Cancer is a devastating and traumatic disease. Still today, the most effective treatments are generally surgery in combination with some form of adjuvant therapy such as chemotoxins or radiation. As we are all aware these treatment regimens, although effective, are invasive and can be devastating to the patient. The primary goal of molecular oncology research is to understand in Molecular detail, the mechanisms that drive the development, progression and maintenance of cancer. By gaining this knowledge, they will understand the key pathways that endow the tumor cells with the ability to thrive, metastasize and evade conventional therapies.
Therefore, identification of novel targets is critical for the development of new therapeutics that will increase cure rates and lessen the burden for patients. One such pathway that is critical for many forms of human cancer is the Notch pathway. Notch activity has been shown to be important in tumors of the colon, breast, pancreas, lung, central nervous system among others.
In addition, Notch activity has been shown to be critical in many of the identified tumor initiating cell populations. Using their understanding of the molecular details of Notch activity, their lab has developed an assay for screening small molecule compounds that inhibit the formation of the Notch transcriptional regulatory complex. Currently, they have identified several compounds that are promising as inhibitors of Notch activity. The goal of this project is to further validate the current group of compounds as well as the discovery of others.
* Alexander MacKerell is also collaborating on another grant project with Ari Melnick and Gilbert Privé, click here to read more.
