Date of Award
2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Wright, Amy E.
Abstract
In 2020, the National Institute of Health reported that more than 1.8 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with cancer and over half a million died from those diseases. There is an urgent need for innovative and effective new treatments which stem from novel cancer drug targets. Survivin, the smallest member of the inhibitor of apoptosis protein (IAP) family, is highly expressed during development and in cancer cells but not in differentiated tissues, making it a tumor-selective target for new drug therapies. At only 16.5 kDa, it consists of a single Baculovirus IAP Repeat (BIR) domain and an α-helical coiled coil. Survivin plays a multitude of roles in the growth and survival of cancer cells—which can be attributed to the variable cellular localizations and posttranslational modifications of the protein—including inhibition of apoptosis, mitosis and cell cycle progression, DNA damage repair, drug resistance, metastasis, angiogenesis, and cell senescence, among others. A drug that is able to target surviving transcription or posttranslational modification or disrupt one of these critical pathways may serve as an attractive new cancer therapy. Despite decades of research on surviving and its intracellular functions, researchers have yet to find an FDA approved drug. Using a high throughput approach, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute’s chemical library of marine natural products was screened by the Guzmán lab to identify compounds capable of downregulating survivin expression in A549 non-small cell lung carcinoma and DLD-1 colorectal adenocarcinoma cell lines. From the screening assay, pure compounds were identified which reduce levels of survivin protein in cancer cells. Chapter 2 describes the isolation and structure elucidation of five polyhydroxylated sterol analogs from Ellisella paraplexauroides, four of them novel. Chapter 3 describes the isolation and structure elucidation of two compounds from Eudistoma olivaceum, eudistomin H and I. Chapter 4 describes the secondary biological testing employed to determine if the reduction of survivin expression was driven by reducing de novo production or increasing the degradation of existing protein by evaluating differential gene expression of survivin mRNA using reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction and measuring degradation rates of survivin protein, respectively.
Extent
238 p.
Recommended Citation
Francis, Kirstie Tandberg, "Discovery and investigation of survivin-targeting marine natural products from Ellisella paraplexauroides and Eudistoma olivaceum" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present. 699.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general/699
Identifier
FA00013828
Comments
Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.