Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

My research plan contributes to a CIHR-funded project that uses a defined mouse model of pediatric ovarian cancer to identify an ovarian tumour suppressor within a mapped locus called Granulsa cell tumour susceptibility 6 (Gct6). Traditional genetic mapping strategies in mice have already refined the Gct6 locus to a 1.01 million base pair region of Chr X. It is my project goal to perform informatics analysis with a DNA sequencing data set generated with modern (Next Generation) sequencing technology. The ultimate goal is to identify all potential tumour suppressor gene candidates based on sequence differences between tumour-susceptible (SWR, SJL) and tumour-resistant (Castaneus) mouse strains. In addition to this computational genetics approach, I am involved in a functional test with tumour-susceptible female mice to determine if the Gct6 locus of the most common laboratory mouse strain -C57BL/6- represents a tumour suppressor allele for Gct6. If the answer to the functional test is "yes", the informatics analysis will be simplified, to limit my search for sequence differences that should be in common between C57BL/6 and Castaneus genomes. The ultimate goal of this research is translational; to describe a pathway for pediatric ovarian tumour development in a mouse model that can be further investigated in human cases of juvenile-type granulosa cell tumours.