Biochemistry Commons^™

Killerflip: A Novel Lytic Peptide Specifically Inducing Cancer Cell Death, B Pennarun, G. Gaidos, O Bucur, A Tinari

Dartmouth Scholarship

One of the objectives in the development of effective cancer therapy is induction of tumor-selective cell death. Toward this end, we have identified a small peptide that, when introduced into cells via a TAT cell-delivery system, shows a remarkably potent cytoxicity in a variety of cancer cell lines and inhibits tumor growth in vivo, whereas sparing normal cells and tissues. This fusion peptide was named killer FLIP as its sequence was derived from the C-terminal domain of c-FLIP, an anti-apoptotic protein. Using structure activity analysis, we determined the minimal bioactive core of killerFLIP, namely killerFLIP-E. Structural analysis of cells using …

Investigating The Interplay Between Protein Kinases And Caspases, Jacob P. Turowec

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The balance between cell survival and death is a crucial process in human development and tissue homeostasis, but is also misregulated in disease. In large part, apoptosis is controlled by caspases, a hierarchical series of cysteine aspartic acid proteases that demolish the cell by cleaving key structural and enzymatic proteins, but emerging paradigms have highlighted the ability of kinases to regulate caspase activity. One way in which kinases can control the progression of apoptosis is through phosphorylation of caspase substrates, which acts to prevent caspase cleavage of that target.

In this thesis, we develop new strategies to study this regulatory …