Engineering a high affinity peptide combining computational and experimental methods towards precision medicine applications

Project: Applied Research

Project Details

Abstract

Breast cancer remains a major health challenge in Qatar (and the world at large) with the maximum number of malignant cancer incidences. The latter is primarily due to the metastasis of the cancer cells to other organs in the body. In this regard, breast cancer cells in a subset of patients utilize E-cadherin (E-cad)-based cell-cell adhesion for migration and ‘homing in’ to other organs, thus making it an attractive target for therapeutic interventions. Specifically, E-cad adhesion is mediated by the interaction between E-cad extracellular domain (ECD) on the extracellular side and through the formation of a complex between E-cad intracellular domain (ICD), β-catenin, α-catenin and the actin cytoskeleton on the intracellular side. Further, cytoskeletal forcemediated activation of α-catenin, which is required adhesion assembly and reinforcement through the recruitment of other proteins, requires it to interact with β-catenin. In this project, we will develop a precision biomaterials engineering pipeline combining computational, biochemical, and biophysical approaches and live cell assays to generate a high affinity α-catenin binding peptide. The engineered peptide can be used for modulating β- and α-catenin interaction as well as targeted degradation of α-catenin, and thus, enabling restriction of metastatic cancer cell adhesion capacity.

Submitting Institute Name

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)
Sponsor's Award NumberHBKU-INT-VPR-TG-02-09
Proposal IDHBKU-OVPR-TG-Cycle-2-38
StatusActive
Effective start/end date1/06/2331/05/25

Primary Theme

  • None

Primary Subtheme

  • None

Secondary Theme

  • None

Secondary Subtheme

  • None

Keywords

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