Early Detection of Breast Cancer Using Molecular Beacons
Abstract
During the last funding year, our research focus has been on the design and synthesis of MBs targeting surviving, cyclin D1 and Her-2/Neu mRNAs and examination of the specificity of those MBs in human breast cancer cells. Our results showed that survivin and cyclin Dl MBs are able to produce strong fluorescence signals in breast cancer cells but not in normal cells. We also developed a procedure to detect both survivin and cyclin Dl gene expression simultaneously in single cancer cells, which increases the sensitivity and specificity of detection of cancer cells. Importantly, our study also demonstrated that the fluorescence signals produced from the hybridization of MBs with their specific mRNAs correlate very well with the level of gene expression in the cells, suggesting that MB-detection may have a broad use for detection of tumor marker genes since many of those marker genes are also present at a low level in normal cells and the differences between cancer and normal cells are just levels of gene expression. Based on the results of this study, we have submitted a manuscript entitled "Real-Time Detection of Gene Expression in Cancer Cells using Molecular& Beacon Imaging: New Strategies for Cancer Research" to Cancer Research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA430671
Entities
People
- Lily Yang
Organizations
- Emory University