Evaluating the Efficacy of ERG-Targeted Therapy in Vivo for Prostate Tumors.

摘要

The proposed research will examine the suitability of ERG as a target for prostate cancer therapy by using novel modular inducible transgenic mice. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in men in the United States and the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men. Recent efforts to classify distinct molecular subtypes of prostate cancer have shown that >50% of prostate cancers possess a chromosomal translocation involving the ERG oncogene. I hypothesized that ERG can serve as an effective molecular therapeutic target for prostate tumors. I planned to show this with novel autochthonous prostate tumor mouse models. During this first year of support we have been able to adhere to the timeline of our Statement of Work - Task No. 1 - Generate and characterize an inducible ERG prostate specific mouse model (months 1-17). We have obtained the necessary regulatory approval from our resident IACUC for the mouse studies and proceeded with the mating, genotyping and very preliminary characterization of ERG expression from our prostate inducible mouse model. The initial characterization has not demonstrated any detectable prostate specific ERG expression at the protein level using IHC or Western. We need to complete the characterization of the remaining cohorts of animals and specimens using qPCR and other protein based techniques before any firm conclusions can be made.