Discovery of Cyclic Peptide Estrogens and Antiestrogens

摘要

This predoctoral fellowship application was initiated by Mr. Dan Clark and recently continued by Ms. Sonalee Athavankar. The objective has been to analyze biological pathways involved in breast cancer proliferation and study small molecules with the potential to modulate these pathways. We have created whole cell assays useful for studies of protein tyrosine kinase enzymes, which comprise a major class of drug targets implicated in a subset of breast cancers. We used these assays to study inhibitors of these enzymes in recombinant yeast cells engineered to be permeable to anticancer agents. We have also used recombinant yeast to identify and characterize protein tyrosine kinases isolated from human cDNA libraries. Current efforts are focused on the covalent modification in living cells of proteins involved in breast cancer proliferation.