The Hedgehog (Hh) pathway inhibitors have shown great promise in cancer therapeutics. SANT75, a novel compound we previously designed to specially inhibit the Smoothened (SMO) protein in the Hh pathway, has greater inhibitory potency than many of commonly used Hh inhibitors. However, preclinical studies of SANT75 revealed water insolubility and acute toxicity. To overcome these limitations, we ...

Pancreatic cancer is aggressive and therefore difficult to treat; however, continued efforts have been made with the aim of developing an effective therapy against the disease. The Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway is reportedly involved in the proliferation and survival of pancreatic cancer cells. The transcription factor glioma-associated oncogene (Gli) is a key component of the Hh signaling pa...

Le persone organizzano sempre di più ogni aspetto della propria vita attraverso l’utilizzo di sistemi software, dal lavoro al trasporto alla salute. Possiamo essere sicuri che i programmi dai quali ci accingiamo a dipendere sono affidabili ? Tali programmi possono tollerare maltrattamenti degli utenti? Questa tesi affronta il problema di verificare i sistemi software rispetto ad errori introdot...

The purpose of the present study was to assess the role of hedgehog signaling pathway in the carcinogenesis of eyelid skin and conjunctival epithelial malignant tumors. The study was conducted on specimens from 41 patients with cutaneous eyelid basal cell carcinoma, 22 with bulbar conjunctival squamous cell carcinoma, 12 with bulbar conjunctival intraepithelial neoplasia. Major molecules of Hed...

Signaling by extracellular Hedgehog (Hh) molecules is crucial for the correct allocation of cell fates and patterns of cell proliferation in humans and other organisms . Responses to Hh are universally mediated by regulating the activity and the proteolysis of the Gli family of transcriptional activators such that they induce target genes only in the presence of Hh . In the absence of Hh, the s...

Patched (Ptc) is a putative twelve transmembrane domain protein that is both a Hedgehog (Hh) receptor and transcriptional target of Hh. In this study, we isolated Xenopus Ptc cDNAs, Ptc-1 and Ptc-2, and carried out comparative analyses on their expression patterns. The putative Ptc-2 protein has a long C-terminal extension that has similarities in both length and sequence to those of Ptc-1 prot...

GLI1, which encodes a member of the Gli-Kruppel family of transcription factors, was initially identified as an amplified gene and potential oncogene in a human glioblastoma (Kinzler et al., 1987). A family of Gli genes that includes Gli1, Gli2 and Gli3 was cloned from human and mouse, and found to be expressed in many organs during mouse development (Ruppert et al., 1988; Hui et al., 1994). Th...

The Gli family of zinc-finger transcription factors mediates Hedgehog (Hh) signaling in all vertebrates. However, their roles in ventral neural tube patterning, in particular motor neuron induction, appear to have diverged across species. For instance, cranial motor neurons are essentially lost in zebrafish detour (gli1(-)) mutants, whereas motor neuron development is unaffected in mouse single...