Development of a new mouse model to assess the therapeutic efficacy of GRP78 for prevention and resolution of ER stress in vivo

It is known, that ER-stress plays a role in several, very different diseases like artherosclerosis, dilated cardiomyopathy or neurodegenerative diseases. Maladaptive ER-stress was also indicated to play a prominent role in IPF and seems to represent a key trigger in the pathogenesis of this disease. As 78kDa glucose-regulated protein/immunoglobulin-binding protein (Grp78/Bip) is the key chaperone of the ER, and as it has been shown to counterbalance ER stress-induced apoptosis induced by etoposide or proteasome inhibition in many cell lines in vitro, we plan to assess the therapeutic efficacy of GRP78/Bip for pr…