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The consequences of aneuploidy and chromosome instability

Survival, cell death and cancer
PhD ceremony:Ms K.M. (Klaske) Schukken
When:January 13, 2020
Start:14:30
Supervisors:prof. dr. ir. F. (Floris) Foijer, prof. dr. G. (Gerald) de Haan
Where:Academy building RUG
Faculty:Medical Sciences / UMCG
The consequences of aneuploidy and chromosome instability

Chromosome Instability (CIN) is a process that causes cells to change their chromosome copy number over time, this leads to aneuploidy, which is when cells have extra or missing chromosomes. In this thesis, we further investigate the effects of CIN in tissues and in cell culture. CIN is very common among cancers, 3 out of 4 cancers are aneuploid, while healthy tissue is rarely aneuploid. We show that there are drugs that selectively kill certain forms of CIN, which might one day be used to target specific forms of cancer. In this thesis we also create a new mouse model that can be used to visualize chromosome segregation in mitosis in living mouse tissue to better understand the role of CIN in living tissues and cancers. Finally we show that different tissues deal with CIN differently; CIN is not toxic to mammary tissue, but CIN is rapidly lethal when induced in the intestines.