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- All Subjects: cancer research
- Creators: Maley, Carlo
Adaptive therapy utilizes competitive interactions between resistant and sensitive cells by keeping some sensitive cells to control tumor burden with the aim of increasing overall survival and time to progression. The use of adaptive therapy to treat breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and pancreatic cancer in preclinical models has shown significant results in controlling tumor growth. The purpose of this thesis is to draft a protocol to study adaptive therapy in a preclinical model of breast cancer on MCF7, estrogen receptor-positive, cells that have evolved resistance to fulvestrant and palbociclib (MCF7 R). In this study, we used two protocols: drug dose adjustment and intermittent therapy. The MCF7 R cell lines were injected into the mammary fat pads of 11-month-old NOD/SCID gamma (NSG) mice (18 mice) which were then treated with gemcitabine.<br/>The results of this experiment did not provide complete information because of the short-term treatments. In addition, we saw an increase in the tumor size of a few of the treated mice, which could be due to the metabolism of the drug at that age, or because of the difference in injection times. Therefore, these adaptive therapy protocols on hormone-refractory breast cancer cell lines will be repeated on young, 6-week old mice by injecting the cell lines at the same time for all mice, which helps the results to be more consistent and accurate.
M. lignano larvae were isolated into separate wells of 24-well plates. After reaching maturity (30 days), the experimental plates were exposed to 5 Gys of X-rays every 4 days for a total of a 25 Gy exposure. We observed phenotypes that may be attributed to the acute effect of irradiation (e.g. blisters) but we recorded two types of phenotypes that may be a result of long-term effects of exposure to radiation. We observed enlarged testis and dark regions/masses that appeared statistically significantly more frequently in the treated animals (Fisher exact test, p=0.0026). Preliminary histological analyses of the enlarged testis suggest a benign testis enlargement due to an aberrant growth of the testes and an accumulation of aberrant spermatozoa. Importantly, we found that, similar to cancer, the dark masses can grow in size over time and the histological analysis confirms that the observed masses are composed of cells completely different from surrounding normal cells. Notably, we observed that those masses can develop and then completely disappear through an observed method of ejection. M. lignano offer the unique possibility to study in vivo cancer development in a simple organism that can easily be cultured in the lab in large numbers.
Public education and involvement with evolutionary theory has long been limited by both the complexity of the subject and societal pushback. Furthermore, effective and engaging evolution education has become an elusive feat that often fails to reflect the types of questions that evolution research attempts to address. Here, we explore the best methods to present scientific research using interactive educational models to facilitate the learning experience of the audience most effectively. By creating artistic and game-play oriented models, it becomes possible to simplify the multifaceted aspects of evolution research such that it enables a larger, more inclusive, audience to better comprehend these complexities. In allowing the public to engage with highly interactive education materials, the full spectrum of the scientific process, from hypothesis construction to experimental testing, can be experienced and understood. Providing information about current cancer evolution research in a way that is easy to access and understand and accompanying it with an interactive model that reflects this information and reinforces learning shows that research platforms can be translated into interactive teaching tools that make understanding evolutionary theory more accessible.