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Our Funds at Work
Youwen Zhou, MD, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
Melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer. Early melanomas are curable with surgical excision. Invasive melanomas can metastasize and become fatal. Current therapies are ineffective for treating metastatic disease and specifically-targeted therapies are urgently needed. Understanding the invasion process may offer potential to intervene before melanoma becomes metastatic and may lead to identification of putative targets for improved cancer therapy for melanoma. Recently, we have found that a novel cancer associated gene (named CTHRC1) is abnormally “switched on” in invasive melanomas. Preliminary experiments in our lab suggest this gene is a critical participant in certain steps of cancer development.
In this study, we plan to investigate in detail the roles played by this gene during the process of melanoma invasion and metastasis, using melanoma cells maintained in petri dishes and in experimental animal models. This study will yield important information necessary to turn CTHRC1 gene into a cancer-selective target for developing therapies against melanoma and other human cancers.
(C2006)
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