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Contents 1 Overall project 2 Project Details 2.1 Part 2 2.2 The Experiments 2.3 Part 3 3 Results

Overall project

Cancer recurrence is one of the fears that almost every patient undergoing chemotherapy develops. Recent findings suggest that only a small fraction of the tumor cells, called Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) are able to drive the growth of the tumor. CSCs also show an increased drug resistance, and could remain unaffected after chemotherapy, eventually resulting in the formation of a new tumor.

The Westminster iGEM 2012 team aims to combat cancer recurrence by using one key feature of CSCs – increased Aldehyde Dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity. We aim to characterise the promoters for a range of ALDH isoforms and combine synthetic biology and fluorescence techniques to identify and eliminate these cells, offering a novel tool for cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Project Details

Part 2

The Experiments

Part 3

Results