Browsing by Subject "FABP3"

Breast cancer, which is the most common cancer among women, has a good overall survival rate with over 90% of the patients being alive after 5 years of the diagnosis, and 80% being alive after 10 years. Metastatic breast cancer with metastasis in the brain, however, is associated with a poor prognosis with less than 20% survival one year after the detection of a brain metastasis. Understanding the mechanisms behind brain metastasis formation is crucial for developing therapeutic drugs in the future. The Fatty Acid-Binding Protein 3 (FABP3) has been discovered to have both tumor suppressing and tumor promoting effects depending on the cancer type. This thesis elucidated the role of FABP3 in the formation of breast cancer brain metastases. The results of in vitro blood-brain barrier (BBB) studies show that breast cancer cells overexpressing FABP3 penetrate the in vitro BBB significantly better than the control breast cancer cells. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) revealed further genes associated with the invasiveness of FABP3-overexpressing breast cancer cells. The results of the RT-qPCR combined with immunofluorescent staining suggest that a transcription factor plays a part in the formation of brain metastases. Further studies need to be conducted to fully understand the role of this transcription factor. The affinities of the FABP3-binding peptide CooP and its alanine scan-generated variants CooP-K and [Ala5]CooP to FABP3 has previously been studied through microscale thermophoresis. The abilities of the CooP peptide variants to pass through the in vitro BBB were studied in this thesis. The results may be of importance for the development of targeted therapies.