Identification of Prostate Stem Cells in the Mouse

描述(申请人提供)：前列腺癌是美国男性第二常见的癌症。此外，目前复发前列腺癌的治疗在很大程度上是不成功的。癌症干细胞的概念认为，突变的未分化细胞推动肿瘤的形成，目前缺乏针对这些细胞的癌症治疗会导致复发。该实验室提出，干细胞存在于前列腺中，这些干细胞的恶性转化会导致癌症。这只小鼠将被用作人类前列腺的模型。虽然我们的最终目标是识别可能的前列腺癌干细胞，但目前的项目专注于首先在正常前列腺组织中识别可能的干细胞。实验将集中在从小鼠身上回收前列腺组织，然后固定、切片并用针对各种干细胞标记的抗体对该组织进行染色。前列腺组织也将被分离，并将利用流式细胞术分离表达干细胞标记物的细胞群，以努力表征这些细胞的干细胞特性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men. Moreover, present treatment of recurrent prostate cancer is largely unsuccessful. The cancer stem cell concept holds that mutated undifferentiated cells drive tumorigenesis and that the lack of current cancer treatments to target these cells leads to recurrence. This laboratory proposes that stem cells exist in the prostate and that malignant transformation of these stem cells leads to cancer. The mouse will be used as a model for human prostate. While our ultimate aim is to identify putative prostate cancer stem cells, the current project is focused on first identifying the putative stem cells in normal prostate tissue. Experiments will focus on recovering prostate tissue from mice, then fixing, sectioning and staining this tissue with antibodies against a variety of stem cell markers. Prostate tissue will also be dissociated and flow cytometry will be utilized to separate cell populations expressing stem cell markers in an effort to characterize the stem cell properties of these cells.