Cydnee Wilson
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Kassidy Jungles
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Departments of Radiation Oncology and Pharmacology / Medicine
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 4 (1:40pm – 2:30pm)
Authors: Cydnee Wilson, Kassidy Jungles, Meilan Liu, Zhuwen Wang, Erin Holcomb, Ashley Pearson, Amanda K. Huber, Michael D. Green
Abstract
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer class diagnosed in women, with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) being the most aggressive subtype. TNBC lacks specific hormone receptors within the breast tumor, which renders several targeted therapies against them ineffective. Consequently, TNBC can be treated with few therapies beyond surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, and more work is needed to develop novel therapies for TNBC. Combining two or more therapeutic agents–combination therapy–has become a standard therapeutic strategy for improving cancer patient response. Prior studies have indicated that the efficacy of these monotherapies used to treat TNBC increases when incorporated together. Targeting mitotic catastrophe is one potential area of interest for treating TNBC. One method of inducing mitotic catastrophe is targeting aurora kinase B (AURKB), a mitotic serine kinase that plays a critical role in regulating the cell cycle through chromosomal segregation during the cell cycle. A potential combination may exist in combining aurora kinase inhibitors and radiation. Radiation therapy (RT), a mainstay breast cancer therapy that induces DNA damage within cells, has been studied and confirmed to have a synergistic effect in the death of cancer cells when combined with an AURKB inhibitor. Although this effect has been established in other categories of cancer cells, it has not been explored in BC cells. We studied the effects of combining an aurora kinase B inhibitor, Barasertib, with radiation by comparing the results from cell viability assays with those from clonogenic survival assays, flow cytometry, qPCR, and other in vitro wet laboratory methods. Our results indicate that combining these two therapies is synergistic, and their effects are enhanced when implemented together rather than as monotherapies.
