Sydney Malawer
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Marisa Aikins
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Internal Medicine / Medicine
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 4 (1:40pm – 2:30pm)
Authors: Sydney Malawer, Marisa Aikins, Sofia Merajver
Abstract
Lung cancer makes up about 12% of people diagnosed with cancer, and about 25% of deaths caused by cancer. Additionally, non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) makes up about 85% of cases of lung cancer. The Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK) gene when fused with EML4 is a mutational driver in NSCLC, and the current primary treatment is ALK inhibitors. There are three generations of effective ALK inhibitors (e.g., alectinib, ceritinib, and lorlatinib), all of which have proven to be more effective than chemotherapy, but there is still no cure. An alternative treatment is immunotherapy, but efficacy in ALK+ NSCLC is inconclusive because it is relatively new and has not been researched much. To evaluate immunotherapy efficacy, a co-culture model of ALK+ NSCLC tumor spheroids and immune cells will be developed. An important first step to evaluate immunotherapies is to determine the composition representative of an in vivo tumor. This study aims to test different seeding cell densities combined with different concentrations of collagen type I in order to produce the best representation of an in vivo tumor. This will be accomplished by using different amounts of cells and different concentrations of collagen type I and using the BioSpa, which takes an image of the spheroids every twelve hours, to determine the optimal seeding cell density and collagen type I concentration.
