9505345 Perrin The International Junior Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellows Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit by Dr. David M. Perrin to work with Professor Claude Helene of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in France. Antisense technology encompasses virtually all research directed toward the rational generation of molecules which can associate with DNA and/or RNA to block protein production, suppress cell growth and division, or even kill the cell. The goal of this project is to characterize antisense interaction by exploring 1) the synthetic coupling of medicinally important DNA-damaging functionalities to the oligonucleotide, 2) the synthesis and properties of more resilient nucleotides, 3) the synthetic coupling of intercalators to increase the stability of the interaction and to characterize the antisense association by spectrophotometric techniques and 4)the generation of other sequences whose inhibitory properties will be examined in- vivo in bacterial and mammalian cell systems. ***
