FECRI scientists Professor Nuzhat Ahmed, Professor George Kannourakis and Federation University Australia PhD candidate Tamsin Wesley have have published research into Ovarian cancer-‘The attributes of plakins in cancer and disease: perspectives on ovarian cancer progression, chemoresistance and recurrence’ in the journal Cell Communication and Signalling BMC. This is Tamsin’s first publication.
Plakins are large proteins that help our cells connect to each other. These proteins are crucial for cell-cell communication and are important in how cells move around the body. The expression of plakins changes in cancer tissues, with some cancer over expressing these proteins while in others it is under expressed. Some plakin proteins are secreted by cells and are present in the serum of cancer patients. This provides an opportunity of using these proteins as biomarkers for early cancer detection.
Our research is focused in determining the role of plakin proteins in ovarian cancer cells and to investigate whether they have a specific role in drug resistance. This will help us to determine if plakins can be targeted and play a role in the treatment of ovarian cancer.
Read the full publication here.
Video courtesy of BMC.
