The role of Patched/Hedgehog signalling in common human cancer.

大多数常见的皮肤癌、基底细胞癌和一些脑肿瘤髓母细胞瘤都是由Patch-Hedgehog途径的突变引起的。尽管有了这些知识，我们仍然不知道皮肤中的哪个细胞会导致基底细胞癌，大脑中的哪个细胞会导致髓母细胞瘤。这项申请描述了一种使用动物模型来回答这些问题的方法，从而加深了我们对正常细胞如何变成肿瘤细胞的理解。此外，这项建议扩展了目前的研究，以检查大型肿瘤集合中的新基因家族成员。

Mutations in the patched -hedgehog pathway are responsible for most of the common skin cancer basal cell carcinoma and some of the brain tumour medulloblastoma. Despite this knowledge we still do not know which cell in the skin gives rise to the basal cell carcinoma, and which cell in the brain gives rise to medulloblastoma. This application describes an approach using animal models to answer these questions and therefore further our understanding of how a normal cell becomes a tumour cell. In addition this proposal extends out current studies to examine new gene family members in large tumour collections.