St Vincent's Institute

• Research units

• Structural Biology
• Protein Chemistry and Metabolism
• Molecular Cardiology
• Immunology and Diabetes
• Bone Cell Biology and Disease
• Stem Cell Regulation
• Haematology and Leukaemia
• Molecular Genetics
• Cell Cycle and Cancer
• Cytoskeleton and Cancer
• Pharmacogenomics
• Invasion and Metastasis
• NRL
• Genome Stability
  • Research Themes
  • Honours and PhD Projects
  • Staff

Inhibition of the Bloom’s syndrome pathway as a mechanism of chemotherapy

Project Type

PhD

Summary

Individuals with BLM mutations develop Bloom’s syndrome and are extremely prone to all forms of cancer, with a greater than 90% tumour incidence by the age of 25. On the other hand, cells from these patients are extremely sensitive to chemotherapy drugs that cause DNA damage. Thus the BLM gene product must protect cells from DNA damage. DNA damaging drugs are widely used in the treatment of cancers in the general population, but resistance often occurs. We have developed a mechanism to transiently inhibit the BLM pathway in tumour cells, and thus make them more susceptible to killing by these chemotherapy drugs. This project will involve improving this system so that it could be used as the basis for new forms of cancer treatment. A combination of cell-based toxicity assays, protein interaction and expression studies, microscopy and tumour models will be used. This research will have implications in how we manage and treat all forms of cancer.