Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference

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Expression of Survival Factors on BT-20 Breast Cancer Cells After Treatment with r-Moj-DN

Undergraduate #46
Discipline: Biological Sciences
Subcategory: Cell and Molecular Biology

Carolina Huertas-Ayala - University of Puerto Rico at Cayey Campus
Co-Author(s): Andrew U and Julio G. Soto, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA


Disintegrins are small peptides produced in viper venoms. Disintegrins bind to integrins and have the ability to activate signal transduction pathways that can result in apoptotic induction and survival inhibition. Cell survival is accomplished by the activation of survival factors that are needed to avoid apoptosis. Our research group has established that a recombinant mutant disintegrin, r-Moj-DN, induces apoptosis of SK-Mel-28 cell line by binding to v3 integrin and as result survival factor expression decreases. We are now investigating if different cancer cell lines expressing the same integrin receptor respond to r-Moj-DN in the same fashion. BT-20, a human breast cancer cell line, express v3 integrin. We hypothesize that the expression of survival factors will decrease after BT-20 treatment with r-Moj-DN. To test this hypothesis, BT-20 cells were treated with 2.5 μM, r-Moj-DN peptide. The expression of the survival factors was determined by extracting mRNA from the treated cells, followed by cDNA synthesis, and QPCR. We analyzed expression of the following genes: BIRC3, Survivin, and CXCL1. Our results demonstrated a decrease in expression for the three survival factor genes tested. This was also supported with fold-change down-regulation. This project will help us understand how the balance of survival factors vs. apoptotic interact depending on the treatment.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): NSF

Faculty Advisor: Julio G. Soto,

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.