CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biological Engineering, February, 2021

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Handly, Erika Daphne.
Other Authors: Michael Yaffe.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130803
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author Handly, Erika Daphne.
author2 Michael Yaffe.
author_facet Michael Yaffe.
Handly, Erika Daphne.
author_sort Handly, Erika Daphne.
collection MIT
description Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biological Engineering, February, 2021
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spelling mit-1721.1/1308032021-05-26T03:25:53Z CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats interference screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer Handly, Erika Daphne. Michael Yaffe. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering Biological Engineering. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biological Engineering, February, 2021 Cataloged from the official PDF version of thesis. "February 2021." Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-168). Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States, with only modest improvements in patient survival in the past few decades. Standard-of-care consists of surgical debulking followed by a combination of platinum and taxane agents, but relapse and resistance frequently occur. To identify genes that confer sensitivity or resistance in tumor cells treated with platinum chemotherapeutics, I performed genome-wide screens combining cisplatin or oxaliplatin with CRISPRi pooled gene knockdowns. Screens were analyzed at 9-days to mimic patient care, and at 48-hours to isolate the short-term DNA damage response. Genes whose knockdown caused sensitivity to the platinum chemotherapeutics were identified through a multi-objective optimization approach to account for knockdown efficiencies and variances in sequencing depth. To filter the noise in the genome-wide screen and more confidently identify 'hits,' a smaller pooled CRISPRi screen of four hundred targets was designed, and a few 'hits' were validated. Interestingly, knockdown of FAAP24, a component of the FA core complex, was found to sensitize multiple ovarian cancer cells to platinum compounds, and thus may be a promising candidate for a combination treatment with oxaliplatin and cisplatin. Chapter 5 details an implementation of a combination therapy with cisplatin using peptide nanoparticles. Peptide nanoparticles are a promising therapeutic for the delivery of siRNA and allow for targeting of specific proteins that are difficult to inhibit with small molecular inhibitors; specifically, nanoplexes allowed for the targeting of the REV3 protein, the catalytic component of the translesion synthesis polymerase. Interfering with REV3 expression through siRNA has a synergistic effect with cisplatin treatment in both human and mouse models of lung cancer, indicating that REV3 is an excellent target to combine with cisplatin therapies. This REV3 knock-down sensitivity was also extended to human ovarian cancer cell lines, indicating the potential of the combination treatment for both lung and ovarian cancers. by Erika Daphne Handly. Ph. D. Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Biological Engineering 2021-05-25T18:20:22Z 2021-05-25T18:20:22Z 2020 2021 Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130803 1252627192 eng MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 218 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Biological Engineering.
Handly, Erika Daphne.
CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title_full CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title_fullStr CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title_full_unstemmed CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title_short CRISPRi screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
title_sort crispri screens to identify combination therapies for the improved treatment of ovarian cancer
topic Biological Engineering.
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130803
work_keys_str_mv AT handlyerikadaphne crispriscreenstoidentifycombinationtherapiesfortheimprovedtreatmentofovariancancer
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