1. Isolation and characterization of anticancer molecules;
Impressive strategies are needed to be developed to use convenient plant resources which have high biological diversity. One of these methods is to perform chemical and biological search of the plant extracts at the same time. Recently, naphthoquinone derivatives recognized as topoisomerase inhibitors are already known for their anti-parasitic and anticancer activities. Therefore, they are primary target for new pharmacologically active anti-tumor molecules.
Topoisomerase I and II inhibitors forms irreversible DNA adducts which are responsible that these structures are recognized by transcriptional and DNA replication machinery, lead to the cellular ATM and p53 mediated apoptosis. Based on our preliminary screening studies of the significant biological activity, our team has decided to focus on Alkanna genus member of Boraginaceae family.
By this study, first, pharmacologically active antitumor compounds are identified, second the cytotoxicity screening and DNA-topoisomerase I and II inhibitory abilities of these compounds are investigated. Third, the compounds which are used to understand their influences on transcriptional changes, gene expression, apoptotic pathways, chromosomal condensation, and histone modifications are also investigated. Thus, this research proposes to identify and characterize novel antitumor compounds, potential topoisomerase I and II inhibitors may influence major cellular pathways are major goal for therapeutic drug development.
2. Role and importance of NKX3.1 in prostate cancer;
Understanding the molecular interactions of NKX3.1 through it's binding sites, identifying recruiting molecules in damage response pathways such as H2AX, H3 modifications, and the control of gene expression in prostate cancer are major goals of the project where chromatin immunoprecipitation combined RT-PCR and microarray analysis methods are utilized to quantitate DNA-protein and protein-protein interactions of transcriptional, repair complexes in in vitro and in vivo settings.
This pure scientific approach simply unravel as yet unrecognized expression patterns of genes, their functions which can be used for anti-cancer therapy and anti-tumor drug design to facilitate the increased quality of life especially for humans in future.