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 Elizabeth Singer, Ph.D.
Biography
Dr. Singer joined the laboratory of Dr. Steven Smith in 2003 at City of Hope as a Research Fellow. She is developing nanoscale assemblies that specifically target cancer cells using the Bionanotechnology developed in Steve Smith’s City of Hope laboratory.

She is supported by a NRSA Post Doctoral Fellowship Award from the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Singer is a native of Indiana, where she received a Bachelor’s of Science in Biochemistry (with Honor’s) from Purdue University. She performed undergraduate research in Cynthia Stauffacher’s laboratory in the field of Structural Biology. She then worked for three years as a Research Associate at the Biotech company Amgen in Timothy Osslund’s laboratory in the Structural Biology Department, where she crystallized and helped solved the structures of human therapeutics including Epogen, Neupogen, and Kepivance. She then received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UCLA in a joint project from the laboratories of Dr. David Eisenberg and Dr. Dennis Slamon. She identified, isolated and characterized the binding regions of the HER3 receptor, which is overexpressed in Breast Cancer.
Fellowship Abstract
In this project we will exploit a bionanotechnology developed at City of Hope to link multiple copies of a growth factor activator peptide (e.g. Heregulin, Epidermal Growth Factor) to two or three-armed DNA struts. The system is self-assembling and takes advantage of the capacity of bacterial methyltransferases to serve as targeting devices that can covalently link fusion proteins to precise sites on DNA. The device thus formed is expected to inhibit HER3, or EGFR kinase activation by blocking one or more of structural transitions leading to dimerization or oligomerization of the receptor. The devices display the growth factor ligand in a two-dimensional array suitable for capture of multiple extracellular domains of the receptor. Moreover, they can be tracked by appropriately labeling the DNA and have the advantage of increased binding affinity due to the multivalent display of growth factors. Our preliminary results show that a device displaying multiple copies of the growth factor ligand heregulin can bind to cancer cells.

   
 H&E Stain of a Breast Cancer Tumor Bionanoparticle Stain
of a Breast Cancer Tumor




 

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