DNA damage response pathways play important roles in preventing the onset of cancer and regulating the clinical response to chemotherapeutics, and some of the relevant proteins have additional functions during normal development. This fellowship will study new a human protein with key roles in the formation of the lung, and its roles in preventing devastating consequences of normal oxidative damage to DNA, as well as additional fundamental mechanisms involved in preventing genome mutations.
Centrosome Overduplication Contributes To Tumorigenesis
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$495,010.00
Summary
Cancer can be simplistically thought of as a disease of cell growth and division. In order to improve current treatment regimes and identify new ones, the underlying mechanisms controlling cell proliferation need to be fully understood. By defining these regulatory mechanisms, targets for current chemotherapeutic agents can be further characterised and new ones identified. This will lead to the targeted developments of new classes of drugs which can be used in the fight against cancer.
The Mechanism By Which Apical-basal Polarity Complexes Regulate The Salvador-Warts-Hippo Pathway
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$540,099.00
Summary
Cancer is a multi-hit process involving the activation of critical signaling pathways leading to increased proliferation, survival and increased invasion-metastasis. We have discovered that a neoplastic tumour suppressor gene, lgl, acts though the Salvador-Warts-Hippo (SWH) tumour suppressor pathway to inhibit cell proliferation and cell survival. Here we use the model organism, Drosophila, and mammalian epithelial cells to determine the mechanism by which Lgl activates the SWH pathway.