Molecular and cellular expression of novel genes associated with breast cancer

An improved and individualised breast cancer care can be pursued with the use of tumour markers that are associated with risk assessment, diagnosis, prognosis, prediction of treatment outcome, monitoring of the disease and development of novel therapies. As such, this study proposed to characterise and evaluate the potential for the management of breast cancer of four novel unpublished breast-associated genes, the breast-associated UniGene clusters (BUC6, BUC9, BUC10 and BUC11), which were identified in our laboratory by database mining. The first aspect of this research project was to undertake extensive in silico analysis and in vitro expression analysis for all genes using sequencing and RT-PCR based assays on a variety of tissues of normal and cancerous origin in order to further select the most promising candidates for potential use in cancer care. In light of all the data collected, the work was subsequently focused on the BUC11 gene. SinceBUC11 mRNA was found to be expressed at very low levels in normal tissues except in some non-essential tissues where it is expressed at a higher level, BUC11 was not considered a cancer testis antigen. BUC11 mRNA was also found at high levels in all testicular cancer tissues tested as well as in a quarter of prostate cancer tissues tested and at lower levels in a small proportion of melanomas, and thus BUC11 was not considered to be a tumour-specific gene.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Nottingham Trent University

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Laversin, S

Language dc:language

en