Description
- Abstract:
- High Grade Serous Carcinoma (HGSC) is the deadliest form of ovarian cancer among women and causes the most deaths of gynaecological cancers overall (Tudrej, Patrycja et al., 2018). One reason for this is that most cases of HGSC’s are diagnosed once the disease has reached an advanced stage, rendering frontline therapies ineffective. The goal of my project was to identify genetic variations between 4 mice ovarian cancer cell lines; p53 control, p53 knockout (KO), BRCA2 control, and BRCA2/P53 double knockout (DKO). For the remainder of this project I will refer to the cell lines as F3-C, F3, BRCA2-C, and BRCA2, respectively. In the beginning of the project, I attempted to grow all 4 cell lines under high and low attachment conditions to obtain comparative data on their survival in each. I aimed to do this by obtaining RNA sequences of each cell line under both conditions to see if there were any genetic differences. However, the cell lines exhibited extremely poor survival on the low attachment plates, and I was unable to collect enough cells for RNA sequencing. Immunofluorescent staining was then carried out to determine if any of the cell lines were exhibiting characteristics of cancer stem cells, but the results were inconclusive. Finally, I used qPCR to determine expression levels of several genes previously found to be elevated in ovarian cancer. A significant increase in expression of TAF4A and ER-A was found in in the BRCA2 cell line (normalized to 18s), while a significant decrease in expression of ER-A was found in the F3 cell line. There was no significant correlation found between TAF4B and ER-A expression, but the results still pose an interesting question about potential estrogen responsiveness of these cell lines. The work done in this project could be followed up by another undergraduate to determine the importance of TAF4B regulation by estrogen.
- Notes:
- Senior thesis (ScB)--Brown University, 2019
- Concentration: Biology
Access Conditions
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
Niewchas, Abbigail E.,
"Behaviour of Ovarian Cancer Cells in 2D and 3D Under Adherent and Non-Adherent Conditions"
(2019).
Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/mqzs-k260
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Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry department....