India is rich in plant biodiversity, and that has been utilized extensively in traditional medicine. In collaboration with Dr. Asoke Banerji (Phytochemistry, Amrita School of Biotechnology) who is leading the efforts in the extraction and purification of natural products from various plant sources, we plan to test these compounds on the expression of gelatinases (MMP-2 and MMP-9); known to be up-regulated in majority of cancers including breast and colon cancers. MMP-2 and -9 are involved in tumor invasion and metastasis. We are engineering reporter-based cancer cell lines, and designing in vitro assays specifically to test the effect of various natural products on the expression of these two genes.
