Students present cancer research

The Institute for NanoBioTechnology held a mini-symposium on cancer research in the area of nanotechnology on Wednesday. The event, held in the Clipper Room of Shriver Hall, was an opportunity for several graduate students to present their projects in cancer research to others in the field.

Phrabha Raman’s presentation was titled “A Microfluidic Device to Measure Traction Forces During Chemotactic Migration under Confinement.” Her research focused on cancer cell migration and involved creating a microfluidic device containing microchannels with microposts inside them. Microfluidic devices allow scientists to study various cancer cells and other properties in a slow-moving liquid, allowing the cells to interact with the device, enabling the researchers to test specific characteristics. The movement of the microposts as the cells passed over them allowed the researchers to measure the traction forces the cells exerted in a confined environment.

Allison Chambliss presented a report on simultaneous measurements of cell phenotypes, cell cycles and chromatin modifications. Her focus was on a chromatin modification, which is a modification of DNA, called histone acetylation. Imbalances of histone acetylations are often found in cancer patients. The researchers found correlations among histone acetylation and cell size, nucleus size and actin content. Actin is a protein that makes up part of the “scaffolding” within a cell. They hope that their approach, which is already being used in other research projects, will be a more useful way to target tumors.

Sravanti Kusuma’s presentation was entitled “Tissue Engineering Approaches to Study Blood Vessel Growth.” Her focus was on the factors that cause the deposition of the extracellular matrix, or ECM, in blood vessels. She studied how ECM deposition is different between arterial and venous endothelial cells, based on their outputs of the proteins collagen I, collagen IV, fibronectin and laminin. Her research group also looked at how these effects changed under hypoxic conditions with low levels of oxygen.

Stephany Tzeng’s research project was on new delivery methods of treatments for hematomas in which blood pools outside of a blood vessel. The researchers wanted to find a versatile, tailorable and polymer-mediated form of gene delivery. They used Poly(beta-amino esters), or PBAEs, as their delivery method, and focused on experiments like flow cytometry to narrow down the number of usable polymers to the most viable and effective ones. They plan on doing further research using living organism models.

The last speaker was Brian Keeley, whose project was called “An Epigenetic Approach to Assessing Specificity and Sensitivity of DNA Methylation.” His research focuses on identifying DNA methylation, a method of altering DNA, using methods like silica paramagnetic particle nanotechnology and quantum dot FRET nanotechnology. Keeley looked specifically at the context of specificity, sensitivity and how those definitions have changed over time. Technologies that check whether DNA methylation is present need to be both highly specific and highly sensitive.