Leanne Ahronian: Discovering That Normal Tissue Surroundings Change the Behavior of Cancer Cells
Cancer cells at metastatic sites tend to exhibit a "dedifferentiated" state, meaning the cancer cells have lost the characteristics of the cells from which they arose. This is traditionally seen as a sign of invasiveness, and often correlates with a poor prognosis. As cells migrate through tissue, they are exposed to matrix proteins that the cancer cells would not normally have been exposed to. As a senior majoring in biology, Leanne Ahronian attempted to determine the effects of matrix proteins on the form and behavior of breast cancer cells. As cancer cells gain an increased ability to metastatically invade normal tissue, the cancer cells progressively "dedifferentiate" to a simpler form from what they were. Ahronian found that if she cultured cells from a breast cancer line called AU-565, normal cells, and the protein collagen all together in the same dish, the behavior of the cancer cells changed, depending on their degree of physical contact with the normal cells and collagen. This research suggested that variations in the normal tissue environment that cancer cells moved into could have differing effects on the behavior of the cancer cells. Ahronian worked in the Cancer Cell Biology group, run by George Edick. Her project, "Increased Invasive Phenotypes in AU-565 Breast Adenocarcinoma Cells placed second in the theoretical category of the 2007 Undergraduate Research Forum and Awards. This fall, she begins work in the Cancer Biology Ph.D. Program at UMass Medical School (Worcester). |
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