Neuroblastoma is a tumor of the peripheral nervous system and its average age of diagnosis is between 1 and 2 years old. Unfortunately, half of these tumors are very aggressive and still extremely difficult to cure. In recent decades it has been shown that neuroblastoma tumors almost display a paucity of mutations, but instead a lot of copy number alterations occur. One of these recurrent copy numbers is gain of 17q which is strongly correlated with poor patient outcome. Intersection of genes displaying significantly upregulated expression during murine TH-MYCN driven neuroblastoma tumor development, neuroblastoma specific dependencies as defined by the Cancer Dependency Map initiative and genes encoded on the 17q amplified region lead to the identification of the ‘Gap Junction protein Gamma 1’ gene (GJC1), a member of the connexin protein family, by the host lab as a putative novel key dependency in neuroblastoma. In this research project, I will make in vitro model systems to unravel the functional implication of GJC1 in neuroblastoma tumor formation. In a first step, I will investigate if GJC1 functions as a regulator of replicative-associated transcriptional responses in neuroblastoma tumors. Secondly, I will explore the interactome of GJC1 as putative innovative targeted therapeutic entry point.