Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2008

Mentor: Michael White
Department: Cell Biology
Room number: K2-234
Mail Code: 9039
Phone number: 8-2861
E-mail: Michael.white@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title: Isolation of novel conditional dependencies in tumorigenic regulatory networks.

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): NA

Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): NA

Project Type (patient-based research, animal-based research, or basic research; this characterization is only to permit a general classification for grouping similar types of projects) Basic research

Brief Description of Project: The goal is to leverage uniquely available data sets from multiple high throughput genome-wide siRNA screens to identify gene products specifically required for cancer cell survival. Quantitative viability phenotypes in response to individual depletion of each of over 21,000 genes have been produced using three different human non small cell lung cancer cell lines and one normal diploid non cancerous bronchial epithelial cell strain. Mr. Hall will computationally combine these data sets to identify candidate gene products that selectively support survival in tumorigenic cell backgrounds as compared to normal cells. Candidates will then be tested in a series of RNAi-based loss-of-function studies with appropriate controls to identify those that aberrantly support tumorigenic regulatory platforms.