Date of Award

1-1-2010

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Sub-Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

John J Lavigne

Second Advisor

Paul R Thompson

Abstract

The aberrant glycosylation of integral cell membrane and secreted glycoproteins is a hallmark of carcinogenesis and presents a unique opportunity to detect cancer at its earliest stages, when it is most treatable. Work towards developing boronic acid functionalized bead based peptidyl synthetic lectins (SLs) for the detection of these unique glycosylation patterns will be discussed. Optimization of library design and screening techniques, identification and characterization of selective SLs, and development of an SL array to differentiate carcinogenic cell types and cancer associated glycans will also be highlighted.

Along these same lines, work pertaining to the development of a bead based peptide library for the substrate specificity characterization of the enzyme, protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1) will be discussed. The dysregulation of the activity of this enzyme has been implicated in a number of diseases including cancer and heart disease, and determining the substrate specificity for PRMT1 is an important step towards the development of potent and selective inhibitors of the enzyme. This work has identified a significantly more selective inhibitor of PRMT1 and developed the methodology for determining the substrate specificity of other arginine modifying enzymes.

Rights

© 2010, Kevin Lee Bicker

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