National Science Foundation Awards $299,994 Grant for Research

The National Science Foundation hereby awards a grant of $299,994 to Delaware State University for support of the project entitled “Research Initiation Award: Regulation of Gene Expression by the CD44-ICD Signaling Pathway,” that is under the direction of Karl Miletti. This award is expected to total $299,994 that starts June 1 , 2017 and ends May 31, 2020. 

The central hypothesis of this grant proposal is that CD44, a cell membrane receptor present in a variety of cell types, has the ability to function as a molecular on/off switch in the regulation of gene expression. We hypothesize that this regulation is mainly via its CD44 intracytoplasmic domain (CD44-ICD) interacting with transcription factors and/or the CD44- ICD response element (CIRE) in the promoter region of genes. We further hypothesize that the expression of the matrix metalloproteinase 9 gene (MMP-9), a gene model proposed for these CD44-mediated signaling pathway studies and key enzyme in development, can be regulate by the interaction of transcription factors p53 and Runx2 with CD44-ICD on the MMP-9 promoter region.