Dawn R Christianson

Arrowhead Research

Autosomal co-dominant genetic disorder alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency (AATD) causes pulmonary and liver disease. Individuals homozygous for the mutant Z allele accumulate polymers of Z-AAT protein in hepatocytes, where AAT is primarily produced. This accumulation causes endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, oxidative stress, damage to mitochondr...

Background & aims: Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is a genetic disorder causing pulmonary and liver disease. The PiZ mutation results in mis-folded alpha-1 antitrypsin protein (Z-AAT) leading to hepatocyte accumulation, fibrosis and cirrhosis. RNAi-based therapeutics silencing production of hepatic Z-AAT might benefit patients with AATD-ass...

Receptors in tumor blood vessels are attractive targets for ligand-directed drug discovery and development. The authors have worked systematically to map human endothelial receptors ("vascular zip codes") within tumors through direct peptide library selection in cancer patients. Previously, they selected a ligand-binding motif to the interleukin-11...

Supplementary Information

Metastasis is the most lethal step of cancer progression in patients with invasive melanoma. In most human cancers, including melanoma, tumor dissemination through the lymphatic vasculature provides a major route for tumor metastasis. Unfortunately, molecular mechanisms that facilitate interactions between melanoma cells and lymphatic vessels are u...

Several lines of evidence indicate that the effects of adipotide on weight loss and food consumption in obese monkeys are not due to a toxic effect, but rather result from the targeting mechanism of adipotide.

Obesity, defined as body mass index greater than 30, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality and a financial burden worldwide. Despite significant efforts in the past decade, very few drugs have been successfully developed for the treatment of obese patients. Biological differences between rodents and primates are a major hurdle for translati...

The development of improved methods for targeted cell detection is of general interest in many fields of research and drug development. There are a number of well-established techniques for the study and detection of biomarkers expressed in living cells and tissues. Many of them rely on multi-step procedures that might not meet ideal assay requirem...

Mammalian cell membranes provide an interface between the intracellular and extracellular compartments. It is currently thought that cytoplasmic signaling adapter proteins play no functional role within the extracellular tumor environment. Here, by selecting combinatorial random peptide libraries in tumor-bearing mice, we uncovered a direct, specif...

Combinatorial phage display technology may be applied to decipher the molecular diversity of peptide binding specificity to isolated proteins, purified antibodies, cell surfaces, intracellular/cyto-domains, and blood vessels in vivo. The application of such a strategy ranges from identifying receptor-ligand pairs and antigen binding sites to unders...

Biological molecular assemblies are excellent models for the development of nanoengineered systems with desirable biomedical properties. Here we report an approach for fabrication of spontaneous, biologically active molecular networks consisting of bacteriophage (phage) directly assembled with gold (Au) nanoparticles (termed Au-phage). We show that...