Access Type

Open Access Thesis

Date of Award

January 2013

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Department

Nutrition and Food Science

First Advisor

Smiti V. Gupta

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is currently ranked as the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in The United States making it so important to develop new approaches in order to improve the prognosis of this lethal disease. Chemotherapy drugs as treatment for pancreatic cancer are known to have adverse toxic reactions. Thus, development of treatments for pancreatic cancer that are relatively nontoxic is warranted. This thesis reports the potential anticancer effect of garcinol, a compound extracted from Garcinia indica fruit rind which may have promise for treating this lethal malignancy. Using KPC mouse-model for pancreatic cancer, this study has evaluated the mRNA expression response of selected genes in pancreatic tumorigenesis following garcinol treatment using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) technique. We concluded that garcinol exhibits anti-poliferative, proapoptotic, anti-angiogenesis and anti-metastatic properties which is evident by the significant down-regulation of CCND1, MMP9 and Notch1. The findings in this study add to a growing body of literature on anticancer effects of garcinol and contributes to additional evidence that suggests its chemotherapeutic effect on pancreatic cancer previously shown in in vitro setting is extended into animal models

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