Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men. Moreover, present treatment of recurrent prostate cancer is largely unsuccessful. The cancer stem cell concept holds that mutated undifferentiated cells drive tumorigenesis and that the lack of current cancer treatments to target these cells leads to recurrence. This laboratory proposes that stem cells exist in the prostate and that malignant transformation of these stem cells leads to cancer. The mouse will be used as a model for human prostate. While our ultimate aim is to identify putative prostate cancer stem cells, the current project is focused on first identifying the putative stem cells in normal prostate tissue. Experiments will focus on recovering prostate tissue from mice, then fixing, sectioning and staining this tissue with antibodies against a variety of stem cell markers. Prostate tissue will also be dissociated and flow cytometry will be utilized to separate cell populations expressing stem cell markers in an effort to characterize the stem cell properties of these cells.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Type
Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31)
Project #
5F31CA123703-04
Application #
7660382
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-IMM-L (29))
Program Officer
Bini, Alessandra M
Project Start
2006-07-31
Project End
2010-07-30
Budget Start
2009-07-31
Budget End
2010-07-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2009
Total Cost
$44,689
Indirect Cost
Name
Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Department
Administration
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
060217502
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10065
Marcinkiewicz, Katarzyna; Scotland, Kymora B; Boorjian, Stephen A et al. (2012) The androgen receptor and stem cell pathways in prostate and bladder cancers (review). Int J Oncol 40:5-12
Scotland, Kymora B; Chen, Siming; Sylvester, Renia et al. (2009) Analysis of Rex1 (zfp42) function in embryonic stem cell differentiation. Dev Dyn 238:1863-77
Kashyap, Vasundhra; Rezende, Naira C; Scotland, Kymora B et al. (2009) Regulation of stem cell pluripotency and differentiation involves a mutual regulatory circuit of the NANOG, OCT4, and SOX2 pluripotency transcription factors with polycomb repressive complexes and stem cell microRNAs. Stem Cells Dev 18:1093-108