Abstracts Biological Sciences

NDRG2 – The Current Status of Expression, Functions and Regulation in Cancer and Identification of Alternative Splice Forms in Ovarian Cancer

by Sascha Andersen

N-Myc downstream-regulated gene 2 (NDRG2) has been of interest in cancer research in the last decade, because a connection between NDRG2 expression level and the ability to be a tumor suppressor has been observed. This report is divided into two parts. First part is a review article which attempts to accumulate the new knowledge of NDRG2 in cancer from 2010 and till today. Not a lot of reviews are seen yet and this is an attempt to fill out this gap in the research literature. The second part is an original article about ovarian cancer, a cancer that has yet to become a priority in this research area. The article has two parts as well. First, a preliminary study of the expression of NDRG2 in both ovarian cancer cell line SKOV-3 and ovarian cancer tissue. Second, to our knowledge, the first preliminary study examining the two alternative splice forms expressed in ovarian mRNA. The methods used in the original article are real-time PCR and the Comparative Ct Method for the first part and for the second part, normal PCR and gel electrophoresis. The data found suggest that NDRG2 is downregulated in ovarian cancer and that the two alternative splice forms of NDRG2 mRNA are present in ovarian cancer tissue. Even though the future holds promise of NDRG2 as a TS-gene and a biomarker for cancer, more research is still needed to explore the possibility that NDRG2 can be used as a target for treatment for cancer. Advisors/Committee Members: Mitchelmore, Cathy (advisor).