Previous Seed Grant Winners
Where are they now?
In
2000, Wen-Tien
Chen of the Department of Medicine was awarded a seed grant for his
proposal,
"Regulation of Tumor Angiogenesis by Membrane Proteases."
The goal of this is collaborative project was
to gain preliminary data on the molecular mechanisms that control extracellular
matrix degradation on the surface of endothelial cells during tumor angiogenesis.
The specific aim of this seed grant project was to obtain primary data on x-ray
crystallography of recombinant seprase at atomic resolution, which may lead
to new approaches toward identifying potential inhibitor and substrate-binding
molecules for cell surface seprase and its complexes as therapeutic agents in
controlling angiogenesis of human cancer.
Strong preliminary data were obtained. The team incorporated these data into an amended NIH R01 grant application. In April 2001, they were funded by NIH to continue this project, NIH/NHLBI R01 HL33711 entitled “Regulation of tissue repair”. The major goals of this project are to investigate the expression and formation of protease complexes on the surface of migrating cells on collagen fibers and/or in angiogenesis and wound-healing models, and to determine potential protease inhibitors and integrins important in angiogenesis and tissue remodeling.