Home Department: Undeclared
Mentor: James Ford (Medicine - Oncology)

"CDH1: Drug Effectiveness and Cancer Targets"

Many gastric cancers (and associated breast cancers) are found to have a mutation in CDH1, a binding protein that binds two cells together. CDH1 mutation not only contributes to metastasis but also increases the chance to develop gastric cancers. Being able to prove this correlation, and being able to accurately target cells expressing this mutation would drastically increase our ability to fight these gastric cancers without harming unaffected tissues. By knocking out and overexpressing the CDH1 gene we will find which drugs will target a cancerous cell expressing a loss of function mutation in CDH1 without harming a healthy cell.