Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The ultimate goal of this research is to develop a novel method, termed Sequence Identification of
Ligated Oligonucleotides (SILO), which can be exploited for the development of nucleic acid based
anti-cancer therapeutics. Traditional therapeutic development requires each potential drug to be tested
and analyzed individually, which is time consuming, expensive, and impractical. This work seeks to
overcome this problem by developing a novel method, SILO, which can be used to simultaneously test
thousands of potential nucleic-acid based drugs for therapeutic activity, including compounds with
anti-cancer activity. Using SILO, nucleic acid based compounds from 3 nucleotides on up can be targeted
to bind and disrupt disease causing biomolecules at the DNA, RNA, and Protein level. This innovative,
combinatorial biotechnology will permit new types of anti-cancer therapeutic compounds to be analyzed,
and at a rate much higher than previously possible.
The specific aim of this proposal is to develop and optimize the methodology. Preliminary results
show that the method does work, however, it is not yet optimal. After optimization, the focus will shift to
screening disease targets. Initial studies will concentrate on a target that I am explicitly familiar with: an
autocatalytic RNA group I intron that is specific to the opportunistic human pathogen Pneumocystis
carinii, which can be lethal to immunocompromised patients, such as those undergoing chemotherapy.
This proof of principle data will be used as an initial demonstration of the methodology, and will be of
critical importance in seeking extramural funding. SILO will then be exploited for the high-throughput
screening of potential anti-cancer therapeutics. Just a few of the multitude of cancer causing targets that
can be screened are (1) telomerase, (2) oncogenes such as prostate tumor- inducing gene 1 (PTI-l), and
(3) viruses such as human papilloma virus 16 (HPVI6) (cervical cancer).
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 7/1/01 → 6/30/05 |
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