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Medicine and Health Sciences Commons

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University of Alabama at Birmingham

Theses/Dissertations

2021

Master of Science (MS) Heersink School of Medicine

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

A Novel In Vitro Model To Study Immune Interactions In Glioblastoma, Hasan Alrefai Jan 2021

A Novel In Vitro Model To Study Immune Interactions In Glioblastoma, Hasan Alrefai

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Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and lethal primary brain tumor in adults. Despite decades of research, GBM has a median survival of approximately 14 months, necessitating the development of novel GBM therapeutics. The drug-development process has been hindered due to the lack of high-fidelity pre-clinical models. While in-vitro models of patient-derived xenografts (PDX) present an interesting approach to modeling GBM, they typically fail to incorporate the non-cancerous cells that support tumor growth and progression. Others have attempted to address this problem by using techniques such as 3D bioprinting to incorporate astrocytes and macrophages in an extracellular matrix; however, they …


The Role Of Cd38 In Anti-Tumor Immunity And Tumor Immune Evasion, Panpan Yuan Jan 2021

The Role Of Cd38 In Anti-Tumor Immunity And Tumor Immune Evasion, Panpan Yuan

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CD38 is a multifunctional protein that is expressed in many immune cells, modulating NAD metabolism, inflammation and oxidative stress. Recent studies suggest that CD38 is also implicated in tumor immunosuppression. However, the role of CD38 in anti-tumor immunity and tumor immune evasion, and mechanisms involved, are still unclear. We hypothesized that CD38 expression by immune cells constricts T cell-mediated anti-tumor immune responses and promotes tumor cell immune evasion. We investigated whether mice lacking CD38 (CD38-/-) had impaired tumor growth in subcutaneous, intraperitoneal and intravenous syngeneic tumor models. CD38-/- mice showed no difference in subcutaneous B16 melanoma tumor growth and pulmonary …


Characterization Of Rna Polymerase I Trigger Loop Mutations, Collin Ainslie Jan 2021

Characterization Of Rna Polymerase I Trigger Loop Mutations, Collin Ainslie

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RNA polymerases are primarily multi-subunit enzymes that synthesize RNAs from template DNA strands. RNA polymerase I (Pol I) is the eukaryotic RNA polymerase that synthesizes the majority of ribosomal RNA (rRNA) for ribosome production. These include the 5.8S, 28S, and 18S rRNAs which are synthesized from a polycistronic gene in the nucleolus. The rRNAs synthesized by Pol I, the 5S rRNA, & ribosomal proteins come together to synthesize ribosomes through ribosome biogenesis. Dysregulation of Pol I activity has been established to contribute to dysregulation of ribosome biogenesis and disease state development. These conditions include but are not limited to Cincinnati …