Li-Jyun Syu, Research Lab Specialist, Dlugosz Laboratory, Department of Dermatology, University of Michigan Medical School

Stomach cancer is a deadly cancer that is difficult to treat. To improve our chances of successful treatment, it is necessary to learn more about the cellular mechanisms that are responsible for cancers in the stomach. To this end, our laboratory has identified a protein that seems to reproducibly cause tumors in a specific portion of the stomach. This is an image of a tumor from one of these mice. The tissue is stained for several proteins, including the cancer-promoting protein, GLI2* (red) and a growth-stimulating protein, called pS6 (green). Most of the cells are expressing both proteins in different amounts; this produces the multiple colors seen in this image. Understanding which proteins can cause tumors and which proteins are produced by cancer cells within these tumors can help identify drugs to treat these cancers.

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