In Memoriam - Sayeeda Zain, Ph.D. (1944 - 2012)

Mechanisms of Cancer Metastasis and Alzheimer's Disease

Dr. Zain's research interests over the past 20 years have been in studying molecular mechanisms involved in cellular proliferation and death. Presently, her work focuses on two disease animal models created in her lab to study tumor progression and metastases and neuronal death in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). These models were built after her lab cloned mtsl cDNA from malignant tumors and Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) from AD afflicted human brains. The tumor metastases project utilizes an in vivo breast carcinoma metastasis model and the AD project uses transgenic mice overexpressing β amyloid. 

Studies in these projects involve signal transduction events, role of growth factors and their receptors, DNA transfections and gene knock off, deletion mutagenesis, DNA methylation events, protein expression and purifications, and protein:protein interactions to decipher the molecular and cellular basis for tumor progression in breast cancer and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's Disease.