PittPharmacy faculty member Paul A. Johnston, PhD and Dr. Nathalie Wong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong have entered a collaborative research agreement to screen the 50,000 compound Pharmacy School Diversity Library to identify inhibitors of liver cancer cell growth.
This project will do a high throughput screen that identifies compounds that will selectively inhibit the growth of liver cell lines over-expressing the GHF-H1 oncogene.
Hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) are aggressive tumors that are the 6th most common cause of cancer mortality worldwide. GEF-H1 is a microtubule associated guanine nucleotide exchange factor that regulates the Rho family of GTPases that control the organization of the cytoskeleton, cell morphology and motility. GEF-H1 gene copy numbers were amplified in a significant number of HCC tumors (64%) and were associated with increased tumor migration and invasiveness.
Wong will provide a panel of HCC cell lines and Johnston will develop high throughput screening (HTS) assays to screen for compounds that selectively inhibit the growth of HCC cell lines with elevated GEF-H1 expression levels.
Hit compounds from this HTS campaign have the potential to become leads that can be further optimized into novel drug candidates for liver cancer therapy.
Paul A. Johnston, is a research associate professor in the pharmaceutical sciences department at the School of Pharmacy.
