Fellowship for Sakamoto: The Role ot Talin in Prostate Cancer Progression

Targeting metastatic prostate cancer is a clinical priority and a translational challenge, as it requires understanding of the mechanisms undedying metastasis. Interaction between tumor cells and their harvesting environment play important role in growth of prostate cancer and movement of cancer cells toward distant site. Recently, it has been identified that talin, an integrin biding protein, plays crucial role in function of integrin. Without talin, integrin failed to mediate efficient connection between tumor cells and their neighboring tissue. Based on this evidence, we hypothesize that tam play a crucial role in regulating prostate cancer growth and potentially metastasis. In this project, we plan to reduce or increase the expression of talin in cultured prostate cancer cells to see the biological role of talin, including growth, ability to penetrate vessels and distant movement of prostate cancer cells. Next, we will study the biological effect of talin in mouse model. We will use immunosuppressed mice to inject the prostate cancer cells that have either increased or reduced expression of talin under the skin of mouse and we will compare the growth of tumor. Additionally, we will inject those cell lines through the tail vein and compare the effect of talin expression in ability to colonize to the lung. Finally we will try to study the expression of talin in human prostate cancer specimen as well as prostate cancer mouse model and will compare the expression level of talin in different stages of prostate cancer progression to metastasis.