Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

School of Medicine

Department

Medicine

Committee Chair

Lan Guo

Committee Member

Timothy Eubank

Committee Member

Alexey Ivanov

Abstract

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the first cause of tumor-related death worldwide. Despite the advancement in surgical and medical treatment, the prognosis of the disease remains poor1. To date, there is no available molecular assay to predict the benefit of therapy or tumor recurrence 2. ZNF71 was reported in our previous study, which identified a 7-gene predictive signature for the clinical benefit of chemotherapy and prognosis in NSCLC2. The study concluded that patients who have higher ZNF71 protein expression have better survival. For this reason, we decided to study the molecular function of ZNF71 and how it may affect apoptosis, proliferation, and/or epithelial-mesenchymal transformation (EMT) in NSCLC. The study is restricted by the regulations of COVID-19 social distancing, so many experiments were stopped and recommended for future work. We used a Taxol-resistant cell line H460-R derived from the Taxol-sensitive H460-P NSCLC cell line to compare the level of ZNF71. H460-P cells express a higher level of ZNF71 mRNA, and Taxol induces it slightly. Also, we found that the ZNF71 mRNA level is higher among epithelial NSCLC, and lower in mesenchymal-like-cells. Furthermore, KRAB containing ZNF71 is expressed dominantly in mesenchymal NSCLC, while KRAB-less ZNF71 is expressed in both mesenchymal and epithelial and its level is always higher than KRAB isoform except for in H460-R cells. This suggests that a KRAB to KRAB-less ratio could has a role in the cells' fate and the patients' prognosis, but further studies are required and recommended.

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