1.       Design research experiments aiming at discovery of novel protein biomarkers

2.       Handle complex protein samples

3.       Recognize the key elements of HPLCs and mass spectrometers

4.       Analyse mass spectra to identify and quantify proteins

5.       Understand a wide diversity of approaches to investigate proteins by mass spectrometry

6.       Write a scientific report and review the reports of other students

Approaches
Practical work with protein samples obtained from cancer cells, their analyses with mass spectrometry and data management using bioinformatics. Lectures and literature discussions will support concepts of experimental design and background of the used approaches. Further, to deepen your insight, you will meet other PhD and Post-Doc investigators in the Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics group and discuss their protein research projects .
 

Assessment
The grade is based on the experimental work skills, on the contribution to the discussions, and the quality of the research report and the research presentations.

Contents
Many cancer patients are nowadays being treated with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or very expensive targeted therapies, while the positive or negative response to these therapies will manifest itself only after weeks or months. Therefore, patient-tailored or personalized therapy would set off more effective treatments and improve the clinical outcomes. Ideally this will permit to discriminate between responders and non-responders, and will reduce toxicity. Some successful strategies have been developed allowing selection of patients that will benefit from individualized treatments; a well-known example is the 25-30% of breast cancer patients with overexpression of the HER2 protein that can successfully  be treated with the antibody trastuzumab. For many diseases however, the treatment outcomes for specific patients are unpredictable.

In this course you will learn how a cellular cancer model can be used  to search for proteins that play a role in the response to treatment with drugs and that may be applicable as biomarkers that predict clinical outcome.

Coordinator

Mw. Dr. M.Slijper, email: M.Slijper@uu.nl