Fellowship boosts ovarian and prostate cancer research partnership

Researchers at the University of Patras, Greece, have joined forces with a team at the OU to study different tumour markers with the aim of developing novel therapeutic and diagnostic reagents for use in the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian and prostate cancers. 

OU expertise in the design, selection and use of aptamers – small DNA fragments that offer an alternative to antibodies as targeting reagents in diagnosing and treating cancer among other diseases – is being brought together with the Greek team’s expertise on molecular tumour markers.

The OU research element is supported by a 2008 Mike Price Fellowship awarded to OU researcher Sotiris Missailidis.  Fellowship sponsors are the European Association for Cancer Research and the European CanCer Organisation.  The team at the University of Patras is led by Professor Sotiropulou.

Molecular targeted therapeutics and diagnostics is an area of growing research interest and will hopefully lead to earlier diagnosis and improved treatment of cancers.

For more information on the research contact Dr Sotiris Missailidis in the Department of Chemistry and Analytical Sciences: s.missailidis@open.ac.uk

For the latest publications relating to aptamers, visit http://oro.open.ac.uk/cgi/search/simple and search for ‘aptamers’.