Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Combination Chemo-Pdt Ionic Nanomedicines As Enhanced Therapeutics For Cancer, Samantha Macchi

Arkansas Women in STEM Conference

Cancer remains as one of the leading causes of death in humans worldwide. Nanotechnology has made great strides in improving treatment for the disease. This work describes a simplistic approach to design self-assembled combination nanomedicines. A facile one-step ion exchange reaction is utilized to combine a chemotherapeutic (phosphonium) cation and photodynamic therapeutic (porphyrin) anion. An aqueous nanomedicine is prepared from the hydrophobic ionic combination drug via a single-step reprecipitation method. Upon conversion to ionic combination drug, improved photophysical properties of porphyrin were observed. These characteristics subsequently led to increased photodynamic therapeutic activity of nanomedicines—explained by greater singlet oxygen quantum yield. …

In Patients With Hepatocellular Carcinoma (Hcc) (P), Is Bevacizumab With Atezolizumab (I) More Effective Than Sorafenib (C) In Long-Term Clinical Prognosis (O)?, Joon Lee

Capstone Showcase

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third leading cause of cancer death globally. China contributes to half of the global incidence of liver cancer, with about 70-85% being HCC. Definitive treatment for this condition would be surgical resection with liver transplant but for obvious reasons, the majority of affected patients are unable to meet the necessary criteria. Sorafenib is a form of chemotherapy that has been the mainstay treatment of HCC since its approval in 2007. More recently, the combination of Bevacizumab and Atezolizumab has shown greater efficacy in the treatment of unresectable HCC. Additionally, this new combination therapy shows favorable …

Detecting Multiple Myeloma In The Primary Care Setting, Anna Schweidler

Capstone Showcase

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a hematological malignancy arising from differentiated B-lymphocyte white blood cells called plasma cells. Hematological malignancies are the fourth most diagnosed cancers, composing approximately 9% of all cancer diagnoses. Specifically, multiple myeloma attributes to approximately 2% of cancer diagnoses in the United States². MM incidence has increased significantly over the past years, increasing 40% in the United States and 126% globally from 1990-2016 ². Affecting 7.0 out of every 100,000 people², multiple myeloma is considered a rare form of blood cancer. Many strides have been made in the treatment of multiple myeloma …

Quantitative Analysis Of Cadaveric Pelvic Lymph Nodes, Brandon Y. Boeur, Matthew P. Kayal, Jade Johnson, Yuhyun Kang, Kelsey Rice, Alicia Schmidt, Shelley Dicecco

Research Day

Introduction: Lymphedema commonly develops as a result of cancer treatments, including surgical removal of lymph nodes (LN). Research suggests there are 500-800 (LN) throughout the body. Deciding how many LN to remove and predicting possible severity of damage can become problematic when the range of LN in one area can vary by 30 LN.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate more precise ranges of pelvic LN within cadaver samples.

Methods: Quantification of LN for number occurred on cadavers simultaneous with DO, PT, and PA students’ dissections. Demographics of the cadavers were 27 female, 16 male, 39 Caucasian, …

Recent Incidences And Trends Of The Top Five Cancers In Northeast Appalachian Tennessee, Adekunle Oke, Sylvester Olubolu Orimaye, Ndukwe Kalu, Faustine Williams

Appalachian Student Research Forum

Introduction: Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States (U.S.), after cardiovascular disease. Although there has been a continuous decline in cancer mortality rates in the U.S. over the past two decades, the Appalachian region, which extends through 13 states and 420 counties in the southeastern part of the U.S., has seen a lower decline in cancer mortality. From 1980-2014, cancer deaths decreased by almost 45%, but cancer mortality rates in rural Appalachia was 36% higher than for urban non-Appalachian counties. In terms of cancer-specific, although breast cancer mortality rates have also decreased significantly nationally, a …

How Low Can You Go? Feature Selection For Drug Discovery, Derek Jones, Sally R. Ellingson, W. A. De Jong

Commonwealth Computational Summit

The cost of bringing a drug to market depends on how quickly a candidate drug can be “discovered” and evaluated to ensure safety and effectiveness. In this work we develop a method for predicting whether a given drug and protein compound will “bind.” Our aim is to select a set of features to predict drug-protein interactions.

This study focuses on kinases. Kinase inhibitors are the largest class of new cancer therapies. Selective inhibition is difficult due to high sequence similarity, leading to off-target interactions and side-effects. Pictured here human c-SRC.

Temporal Resolution Of Cell Death Signaling Events Induced By Cold Atmospheric Plasma And Electroporation In Human Cancer Cells, Danielle M. Krug, Prasoon K. Diwakar, Ahmed Hassanein

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cancer treatment resistance and their invasive and expensive nature is propelling research towards developing alternate approaches to eradicate cancer in patients. Non-thermal, i.e., cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) and electroporation (EP) applied to the surface of cancerous tissue are new methods that are minimally invasive, safe, and selective. These approaches, both independently and synergistically, have been shown to deplete cancer cell populations, but the signaling mechanisms of death and their timelines of action are still widely unknown. To better understand the timeframe of signaling events occurring upon treatment, human cancer cell lines were treated with CAP, EP, and combined CAP with …

Three-Dimensional Microfluidic Tumor Vascular Model For Investigating Breast Cancer Metastasis, Anastasiia Vasiukhina, Brian H. Jun, Luis Solorio, Pavlos P. Vlachos

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Metastasis is one of the primary reasons for the high mortality rates in female patients diagnosed with breast cancer. It involves the migration of cancer cells into the circulatory system allowing for the dissemination of cancer cells in distal tissues. Understanding the major processes that occur in cells and tissues during metastasis can help improve currently existing therapeutic methods. In order to understand such mechanisms, developing physiologically relevant tissue models is crucial. Advancements in microfluidics have led to the fabrication of 3D culture models with shear stress gradients and flow control that can recapitulate aspects of the tumor microenvironment in …

Persistent Organic Pollutants And Mortality In The United States, Kristiann Fry, Melinda Power

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

Background/Objectives: Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are environmentally and biologically persistent chemicals that include polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and organochlorine (OC) pesticides. Currently, there is limited data on the association between exposure to POPs and the risk of mortality in the general US population. The objective of this study was to determine if higher exposure to POPs are associated with greater risk of all-cause, cancer, heart/cerebrovascular disease, or other-cause mortality in persons aged 60 years and older.

Methods: The analyses included participants aged 60 years and older from the 1999-2006 National Health and …

Mutations In Braf Are Associated With Higher Levels Of Immune Infiltrates In Microsatellite-Stable Colon Cancer, Jake Rubin, Eduard Porta Parto

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

While BRAF is among the most well-established oncogenes in human cancers, more recently it has garnered attention for its role in suppressing antitumor immunity, especially in melanoma. Because tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) density is strongly prognostic in colorectal cancer (CRC)⁷, we decided to investigate the connection between TIL density and the BRAF-activating V600E mutation in CRC.

We used ESTIMATE to quantify immune infiltrate in samples from the TCGA colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) dataset (n = 216). This is an algorithm that uses the gene-expression signature of 141 immune-related genes to infer the presence of immune cells in the tumor infiltrate. …

Nanobubbles Provide Theranostic Relief To Cancer Hypoxia, Christopher M. Long, Pushpak N. Bhandari, Joseph Irudayaraj

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Hypoxia is a common motif among tumors, contributing to metastasis, angiogenesis, cellular epigenetic abnormality, and resistance to cancer therapy. Hypoxia also plays a pivotal role in oncological studies, where it can be used as a principal target for new anti-cancer therapeutic methods. Oxygen nanobubbles were designed in an effort to target the hypoxic tumor regions, thus interrupting the hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) regulatory pathway and inhibiting tumor progression. At less than 100nm, oxygen nanobubbles act as a vehicle for site-specific oxygen delivery, while also serving as an ultrasound contrast agent for advanced imaging purposes. Through in vitro and in vivo studies, …

The Effect Of Luteolin On Human Glioblastoma, David M. Anson, Samson Amos, Robert L. Paris, Denise S. Simpson

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is widely recognized as the most common and lethal of the malignant gliomas. Few effective therapeutic treatments are available as five-year survival rates of diagnosed individuals are less than five percent. Luteolin, a common flavonoid found in a variety of fruits and vegetables, has demonstrated significant promise in combating cancers of the breast, colon, liver, lung, and bone. In this study, we investigated the effects of luteolin on glioblastoma multiforme cell lines U-251, U-87, and U-1242. Cell viability was assessed using cell count with trypan blue exclusion and MTT assays. Results revealed that luteolin reduces GBM cell …

Effects Of Serum Levels Of Vitamin A And Precursors On Colorectal Cancer Mortlaity, Chimuanya Okoli

GS4 Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium

Objective: To examine the relationship between serum levels of Vitamin A and precursors on Colorectal cancer mortality. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted with 14,358 adults who participated in NHANES III. Data was collected via in home interviews and visits by participants to a mobile examination centre for blood sample collection. Characteristics such as family income, educational attainment, marital status, race and ethnicity, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, self reported health, type of resident, body size, cancer status at base line, vegetable consumption and fruit juice consumption were examined. Hazard ratio estimates for all-cause and cancer-related deaths among individuals with …

Synthesis And Biological Study Of Adenylyl Cyclase Inhibitors, Siyuan Sun, Zhishi Ye, Mingji Dai

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Adenylyl cyclases (AC) is a critical family of enzymes which modulates the dynamic cellular level of cAMP, cyclic adenosine monophosphate. The study of cAMP showed that it is indispensable for the signal transduction cascades during many physiological processes, such as immune responses and metabolism which highly relate to cancers. Previous studies of AC inhibitors have been limited due to a lack of isoform-selective small molecule modulators. Selectivity of the molecules is imperative to the activation of only the desired AC inhibitor. The design of the described project was to test the structure activity relationship (SAR) by synthesizing a class of …

Natural Products As Therapeutic Agents In Cancer Treatment, Trevor Stump, Lauren P. Williams, Brittany Santee, Chelsae Ward, Rachel Kunze, Denise S. Simpson, Samson Amos

The Research and Scholarship Symposium (2013-2019)

Cancer accounts for 25% of deaths in the United States, and brain tumors greatly contribute to this percentage. However, relative to other types of cancers, brain tumors prove difficult to treat because they are heterogeneous, highly proliferative, highly invasive, and resistant to the traditional cancer treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Past studies have shown that flavonoids and curcuminoids, two classes of compounds derived from natural sources, are effective in inhibiting the development and metastasis of breast and lung cancer cells. Research has also indicated that these compounds have potential for treating brain tumors.

The purpose of this research is to …

Cellular Uptake Mechanism Of Paclitaxel Nanocrystals, Iris K. Archer, Zhaohui Wang, Tonglei Li

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Therapeutic options for metastasized human cancer in current practice remain limited and, sadly, there is no cure for metastatic cancer. The typical approach, chemotherapy, has both low efficacy due to poor drug solubility, and cytotoxic side effects to healthy tissue when delivered indiscriminately. To address both of these issues, we are pursuing the use of nanocrystal formulations of current chemotherapeutic agents as delivery platforms. Herein, we have studied cellular uptake mechanisms in cancer cells of nanocrystals of a chemotherapeutic agent, paclitaxel. Our goal in this study is to determine whether the nanocrystals can be taken up via endocytosis, especially when …