Kinase networks in pancreatic cancer

Coordinator:		Prof. Dr. Thomas Seufferlein
Institution:		Universitätsklinikum der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Homepage:		www.medizin.uni-halle.de

Protein kinases regulate tumor biology at various levels including proliferation, apoptosis resistance, invasion and metastasis. This makes protein kinases major targets for the development of novel therapeutic strategies.
However, the additional therapy of pancreatic cancer with a small molecule targeting the EGFR yields only marginal improvement in the overall survival of the patients.
There are also indications that some inhibitors do not even hit their respective targets in the patient. Furthermore, there is redundancy in the signalling networks in pancreatic cancer so that the interruption of one pathway is not sufficient to efficiently block the tumor-specific signalling network.

In this project we will
1) evaluate specific protein kinases in pancreatic cancer in vitro and in vivo and examine
2) novel kinase inhibitors provided by BayerSchering Pharma.

The kinases under investigation will be chosen by an expert Jamboree panel. For the ultimate in vivo analysis and validation of these novel targets we will use mouse models of pancreatic cancer that closely resemble the human situation and are therefore valuable models to establish novel targets and novel therapeutic strategies.
This part of the project will be done in cooperation with the group Siveke/Schmid.