Gefitinib as a Potential Treatment for Aggressive CLL
| dc.contributor.author | Liu, Elaine | |
| dc.contributor.examiningcommittee | Medicine | en_US |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Dr. Spencer Gibson (Immunology). | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2012-03-12T18:57:18Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2012-03-12T18:57:18Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012-03-12 | |
| dc.degree.discipline | Medicine | en_US |
| dc.degree.level | Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is presently an incurable disease that is expected to increase in prevalence, as a result of the aging population. Currently, the standard treatment used is chlorambucil or fludarabine, combined with cyclophosphamide and rituximab. The disease has a variable course. Recently, it has been shown that the expression of the tyrosine kinase, ZAP-70 in CLL is a strong indicator of poor prognosis, with a greatly reduce time to treatment from diagnosis, compared with ZAP-70 negative patients. Therefore, therapy that specifically targets ZAP-70 positive CLL might improve these patients’ outcomes. The tyrosine kinase inhibitor gefitinib has been shown to reduce the phosphorylation levels of several tyrosine kinases including ZAP-70 and SYK. We treated several ZAP-70 positive and ZAP-70 negative patient samples with gefitinib and found that gefitinib had a much lower IC 50 for ZAP-70 positive patients than it did for ZAP-70 negative patients. Also, gefitinib induced more apoptosis in the ZAP-70 positive cell line Jurkat than it did in cells lines not expressing ZAP-70. These results support a role for gefitinib in the treatment of ZAP-70 positive CLL. | en_US |
| dc.description.note | October 2011 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1993/5174 | |
| dc.rights | open access | en_US |
| dc.subject | medicine | en_US |
| dc.title | Gefitinib as a Potential Treatment for Aggressive CLL | en_US |
| dc.type | bachelor thesis | en_US |