Megan Rigby

• BSc (Hons) Biomedical Sciences
• Title of project: Optimisation of Basescope probes for the detection of androgen receptor and its AR-V7 splice variant in prostate cancer tissue

Prostate cancer (PC) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men. The prostate is androgen dependent and relies on the androgen receptor (AR) for maintenance and growth. The AR is also a critical molecule involved in PC development and progression and is the main therapeutic target in the treatment of this disease. However, the majority of patients relapse and develop castration resistant disease, for example by the generation of AR splice variants. As this stage is incurable, there is a clinical need to develop new treatment strategies. Basescope procedures were optimised successfully, using HeLa cell pellets to test for positive and negative controls first, to detect both red and green signals. Specificity of RNA probes was then confirmed in different prostate cancer cell lines via the Basescope technique, allowing visualisation of varying levels of AR/AR-V7 in cell pellet samples, for use in imaging mass cytometry in future research.

Funding source:  Newcastle University

Project supervisor: Dr Kelly Coffey