Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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Context: DST INSPIRE faculty from Chennai working on alternative anti-cancer therapy using transgenic zebrafish
Scientists are exploring an alternative anti-cancer therapy that involves targeting tumor generated the formation of new blood vessels which allow the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body’s tissues, technically called angiogenesis.
Angiogenesis is critical in the growth of cancer because tumors need blood supply to grow. Tumors trigger the growth of blood cells by giving off chemical signals that stimulate angiogenesis. Deregulation of angiogenesis is the main reason for tumor growth and progression.
Inhibition of tumor angiogenesis has become a popular anti-cancer strategy after chemotherapy. However, the clinically approved anti-angiogenic drugs are ineffective due to parallel activation of various compensatory mechanisms involving a cascade of molecules, which aids tumor angiogenesis and investigation of these mechanisms are essential for developing anti-angiogenic therapies.
The transgenic or CRISPR/Cas9 edited Zebrafish platform (TZP) can be used for studying the efficacy of a drug as anti or pro-angiogenesis in the next phase of the project.
The transgenic zebrafish model has been selected for the intussusceptive angiogenesis study because of its rapid development, optically transparent, high yield in offspring, and easy techniques for forward and reverse gene manipulation. The CRISPR/Cas9 edited zebrafish platform will also be used for studying the efficacy of a drug as anti or pro-angiogenesis in the next phase of the project.
