Friday, December 4, 2009

Last FSSHH of this year: Jacob Koskimaki

Last FSSHH of this year!!!!

Come enjoy Jacob's presentation, free food + drinks and awesome company of fellow BMEers!

Dec 11th (Friday) 5pm at Clark 110.

Title & abstract: Peptide optimization strategies: merging experimental data with bioinformatics tools to develop potent inhibitors of angiogenesis in breast cancer

The emergence of genomics, proteomics and new peptidomics has provided several advances in the data available to develop endogenous regulators of angiogenesis. Angiogeneis, or neovascularization, is the process where new vessels form from a preexisting microvasculature, and involves interactions among several cell types. Tumors require a blood supply to grow; similarly, abrogating this blood supply is an emerging paradigm to treat diseases such as breast cancer. Our laboratory recently developed a systematic bioinformatics-based methodology to identify several endogenous regulators of angiogenesis, and experimentally verified their activity in vitro and in vivo breast xenograft models. We now have begun to optimize these sequences to enhance activity, and show different experimental techniques combined with bioinformatics tools to increase activity of endogenous therapeutics.