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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Searching for Synergy: FAK Inhibition in Metastatic Breast Cancer Treatment

Conway, Brianna January 2018 (has links)
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among Canadian women and 14-20% will develop lethal metastases within 5 years. A potential novel therapeutic target is Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK), a cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase. FAK’s expression is inversely correlated with survival and is known to regulate cell migration, proliferation and invasion. While tyrosine kinase inhibitors are historically ineffective as single agents, they are commonly used as part of combination therapies. Therefore, given its central role in tumor cell biology and cell signaling, we hypothesized that inhibiting FAK in combination with pharmacological agents commonly used to treat metastatic breast cancer patients will result in enhanced anti-tumor activity. We combined a commercial FAK inhibitor (PF-562271) with a range of chemotherapeutic agents commonly used to treat metastatic breast cancer and searched for synergistic partners. Only DNA topoisomerase inhibitors showed potential to synergistically reduce cell viability when paired with low doses of the FAK inhibitor. However, the combination does not induce an increase in cell death or apoptosis. It was then discovered that both agents in isolation and in combination produce increased levels of ROS, a toxic metabolite. This, along with other more preliminary data, provides clues for a novel proposed mechanism of action for this interaction.

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