AKT/PKB signaling pathways in different stages of skin cancer: prognostic and therapeutical implications.

This project aims to investigate AKT/PKB signaling in different stages of squamous cell carcinoma of the skin. We will start from patient material (patient matched normal epidermis, SCC in situ/full thickness dysplasia, superficial and deep invasive SCC and SCC metastasis) and use immunohistochemistry on tissue micro arrays (TMA) and Reverse-Phase Protien array (RPP) to investigate in small numbers of dysplastic or frankly malignant squamous cells the AKT/PKB signal transduction events. The obtained data will be correlated with other histological characteristics (differentiation status, perineural invasion, tumor size) and clinical data (i.e. recurrence of the tumor, presence of nodal and distant metastasis), indicative of poor prognosis in order to identify prognostic AKT dependent pathways. Those data will also be used to select for tumor material to isolate primary cultures for chemotherapy response studies and epithelial mesenchymal transitionstudies at the cellular level.

Keywords:Skin cancer

Disciplines:Morphological sciences, Oncology, Laboratory medicine, Dermatology