• Eight ways Baylor researchers are fighting cancer

    Dr. Touradj Solouki

    For most of us who are not scientifically-inclined, it’s easy to focus more on the beautiful exterior of the Baylor Sciences Building (BSB) than to think about what goes on inside. But what’s going on inside the BSB could save your life, or the life of someone you love.

    Teams of Baylor professors and students are using their research to fight cancer, searching for ways to both prevent and cure the disease. Here are eight ways Baylor researchers are battling cancer:

    A Strong Team — Dr. Kevin Pinney and Dr. Mary Lynn Trawick, Baylor chemistry and biochemistry professors, have teamed up to focus on two research tracks to fight cancer. They are studying ways to create small molecule anticancer drugs, which could someday kill tumors by stopping cell division or blood flow. Additionally, their advanced cancer research is focused on developing anti-metastatic drugs to keep the disease from spreading.

    Fighting The Spread — Cancer cells that metastasize, or spread, are the major cause of death in cancer patients. Dr. Joseph Taube’s research focuses on better understanding and then fighting that spread of cancer cells. Taube, BS ’03, who worked with Pinney and Trawick as a Baylor student, found a gene called microRNA that plays a key role in metastasis. MicroRNA must be turned off for cancer cells to spread; Taube found that putting it back into cells blocked their spread in mice.

    Natural Products — Dr. Daniel Romo and Dr. John Wood team up to study how molecules found in natural products could fight cancer. Romo isolated a compound from a sea sponge that could fight the spread of certain types of leukemia, and their partnership focuses on studying the cell biology of natural products in hopes of isolating those that could be used as drugs to treat cancer.

    Clues In Your Breath — Do breath and saliva contain clues that an individual might be carrying early-stage cancer? That question drives the research of Dr. Touradj Solouki. The breath and saliva of cancer patients and healthy individuals are compared in an ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometer that contains hundreds of feet of tubes to segregate needed molecules for study.

    Understanding Cancer Progression — If a patient can’t benefit from early detection, Dr. Elyssia Gallagher hopes that her research on cancer progression will help identify new ways to treat the disease. Gallagher studies how protein interactions change in patients who have the disease, particularly how altered proteins can lead to cancer when a process in the cell goes wrong. New techniques in identifying when the proteins have gone wrong could lead to earlier cancer diagnoses.

    DNA Replication and Repair — DNA is the building block of life, and proteins in human cells are constantly responding to and repairing events that could damage it. Dr. Michael Trakselis studies how DNA repairs or replicates using archaea, single-cell organisms that mirror what takes place in the human body. Cells with damaged DNA can replicate and lead to cancerous tumors; Trakselis is focused on understanding how the body gets past DNA damage to find ways to inhibit damaged cells from replicating and leading to cancer.

    Eye Cancer App — In March, we wrote about Dr. Bryan Shaw and his son, Noah, who as an infant had developed retinoblastoma, a rare form of eye cancer that primarily occurs in young children. The Shaws noticed “white eye” in Noah’s baby pictures, a possible sign of cancer. Noah lost the eye, but is today an otherwise healthy child. Spurred by his family’s experience, Shaw teamed with Baylor computer science professor Dr. Greg Hamerly to create an app that detects retinoblastoma by scanning pictures for “white eye.” More than 41,000 people have downloaded the app, with dozens going for testing and some catching the disease early.

    Melanoma — Does skin color make a person more prone to melanoma? Dr. Patrick Farmer, chair of Baylor’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is studying that question. He has focused on melanoma for more than a decade now, and is examining molecular biology of melanin, the pigments that determine hair and skin color and how those melanin react to light and environmental factors. Additionally, his research team is studying copper-based drugs and how they fight melanoma’s most common mutations.

    Interested in learning more about these efforts? Check out this feature from the Spring 2016 issue of Baylor Arts & Sciences Magazine.

    Sic ’em, Baylor cancer fighters!