3. Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive form of
Brain Cancer - average patient survival of 1-2
years
In healthy cells there are several active DNA
Damage Repair pathways, in cancer cells, many
become inactive
Main focus on FanconiAnaemia (FA) Pathway –
active in GBM, inactive in healthy brain cells
“Targeting the DNA Damage response to treat
Glioblastoma”
-Targeting the Fanconi Anaemia Pathway in Combination with ATM, ATR & PARP1
Healthy Cell
Survives
Cancer Cell Dies
Healthy Brain Cells
Glioblastoma Cells
6. Opportunities on Placement
• Weekly Lab Meetings
• Monthly SInFoNiA Meetings
• Medical School Research Day
• Chance to teach/supervise other new students
• Name on Conference Presentations & Future Papers
7. Pros
• Perfect if you want to do a PhD
• Flexible
• Boost CV
• Opportunity to go back and do Final
Year Project
• Meet new people & network
Cons
• Not good if you want to work in
industry – very different environment
• Unpaid
8. Conclusion
Do a placement!
Its an amazing experience and I personally really enjoyed it
They are highly regarded by employers and look amazing on your CV
It’s a great way to network and secure jobs/future study after you graduate
9. Acknowledgments
Collis Lab:
Ola Rominiyi
Katie Myers
Natasha Carmell
CharlotteTripp
Clair Fellows
Giancarlo Barone
Connor McGarrity
Anisha Patel
Christian Nunnally
Paminder Lall
Eva Perroux-David
Bryant Lab:
David King
Thomas Jones
Emma Grant
Dan Harrison
Callum Jones
Fatma Bucklain
Stavroula Louka
Thompson Lab:
Rachel Gatenby
Sheffield Hallam
University:
DrAdrian Hall
ThankYou For Listening!
Any Questions?
b5001775@my.shu.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
I was based at the medical school which was comprised of 4 departments. I was in the o&m department in the Molecular Oncology unit, where there were 5 supervisors and over 20 research staff members from many different backgrounds – biology, chem, clinical
Also sinfonia, which is a multi disciplinary institute across different academic units
I worked alongside Ola, who is a neurosurgeon & 2nd yr PhD student. His project was to look at ways of targeting dna damage repair pathways in order to treat GBM, the most aggressive form of brain cancer which has a survival rate of 1-2 yrs.
In healthy cells, there are several active DDR pathways which repair damage and allow the cell to continue to divide. In cancer cells, many of the genes involved are mutated so pathways are inactive, and they rely on just a few pathways to repair damage.
The idea for the project is to inhibit a combo of the pathways, so cancer cells cant repair the dna and die, but the healthy cells survive as they have other active pathways.
The main pathway Ola was looking into is the FA pathway, which has been shown to be active in GBM but not normal brain tissue, so that way you wouldn’t harm healthy brain tissue whilst killing gbm cells
The main techniques I used were tissue culture, maintaining and growing immortalised cell lines
MTT assays, cell survival assay that we used to test inhibitors & TMZ/radiation, and combos
Westerns to see if we have inhibited the proteins, time course experiments to see what the next incubation time was between adding inhibitor and the tmz/radiation
Also did other techniques with other lab members including………
I got to derive my own cells from a brain tumour, still growing, did 3D clonogenics with them
Lots of other non lab opportunities, we had weekly lab meetings with ruth and helens labs
Great way to learn about everyone elses projects and meet new people
Med school research – my name on olas presentation and poster, won prize for best poster and 2nd presentation
Sheffield Institute for Nucleic Acids
