Degree Level

B.S.

Program

Biological Science

First Advisor

Shackleford, Terry

Second Advisor

Langston, Camille

LCSH subject

Ewing's sarcoma; Rhabdomyosarcoma; Western immunoblotting; Cytology; Cell physiology

Abstract

Cancer has become one of the leading causes for premature deaths and continues to increase in rank across the world. An estimated 19.3 million new cases of cancer were reported in 2020 and 10 million cancer related deaths occurred worldwide. Ewing sarcoma and Rhabdomyosarcoma are two pediatric cancers that have not made significant improvements to patient survival for a metastatic diagnosis and the current chemotherapy regiment can cause several undesirable side effects immediately after treatment or later in life. SOX18 has been observed to play some role in various tumorigenic properties like proliferation, invasion, and resisting cell death signals in cancers such as breast cancer, hepatocellular cancer, and osteosarcoma. It also has been observed increasing expression of some receptor tyrosine kinases leading to increased survival in the presence of cancer therapeutic inhibitors. In order to test its effects on tumorigenic properties, Western blot, cell viability, colony formation, and migration assays were performed using Ewings sarcoma (ES8) and Rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cells transfected with pCDNA and pLenti plasmids with negative control and overexpression of SOX18. Results displayed a trend of increased migration and colony formation capacity for pLenti SOX18 transfected cells and significantly increased cell viability in pLenti SOX18 transfected cells. Western blot displayed greater fold difference for pLenti transfected cell. Further studies of overexpression effects on angiogenesis will be analyzed using chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. We anticipate further identification of the role SOX18 plays in tumorigenic properties in RMS and ES may bring to light another possible target for novel targeted treatments.

Keywords: Ewings sarcoma, Rhabdomyosarcoma, SOX18, Sox18, overexpression, Western blot, cell viability, migration

Publication Date

Spring 5-8-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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