Grant: Operating Grant

DNA is widely known as the material used by all living organisms on Earth to store and transmit genetic information. Recently however, DNA has been shown to have other talents as well, one of which is to act as a catalyst to make or break molecules of biological significance. DNA-made catalysts, known as 'DNAzymes', are usually made by scientists either to address fundamental scientific questions or to provide unique solutions to problems of medical importance. Because DNA is an exceptionally stable polymer and can be easily produced commercially, DNAzymes with tailor-made functions are regarded as very desirable molecular tools and are being tested in many research labs around the world as diagnostic kits and therapeutic agents. In this project, we will study a class of DNAzymes denoted here simply as 'RNase DNAzymes' because they can function as special molecular scissors to cut an extremely important class of biological molecules known as 'RNA'. RNase DNAzymes are medically valuable because they can catalytically destroy a specific RNA of interest (such as a cancer-causing RNA molecule). The proposed work is to design DNAzyme based molecular tools for facilitating biomedical research on cancer and develop some potent DNAzymes into therapeutic agents for this disease.