| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 生物醫學研究所 === 98 === Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most insidious forms of cancer whose incidence nearly equals its death rate. Despite extensive research studies, no effective therapeutic approaches for diminishing the morbidity associated with this disease are available. PDAC is characterized by activating Kras mutations and inactivation of Ink4a and the p53-Arf pathway in virtually all cases, while SMAD4—a central regulator of Transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β) signaling—is inactivated in 55% of PDAC. Our overall goal is to understand how perturbations in the inactivation of SMAD4 pathway contribute to the late stages of PDAC pathogenesis, and to elucidate the role of SMAD4 inactivation on the conversion of a benign form of the cancer to a more aggressive metastatic form. To address this important topic in cancer biology, we have devised a strategy to develop model cell lines to dissect the role of SMAD4 defect in PDAC cell lines and the potential synergistic effects of hypoxia and/or TGF-β1 upon SMAD4 inactivation in their metastatic properties. Experiment results showed SMAD4 restored in PDAC model cell lines were down regulate HIF-1α, VEGF, FGF10 and FGFR2 genes expression level, and also inhibited migration, chemoresistance and angiogenesis of cancer cells. We hypothesize that these effects are due to SMAD4 suppresses some cancer genes in PDAC. Further detailed investigations are also needed to fully elucidate the detail mechanisms for our findings here therefore, the future works of this study will go step on looking for those important downstream effect genes regulated by Smad4 protein in PDAC cells and try to find out the connection of all the dependence proteins.
|
|---|
