Cancer Biology and Therapeutics Lab

Last year the Irish Cancer Society were delighted and proud to partner with the Irish Association for Cancer Research to co-fund two PhD Scholarships. One of which was Kate Duffy member of the CBT Lab. Kate is an esteemed awardee of the Irish Cancer Society and Irish Association for Cancer Research PhD Scholarship awardees. Her project is titled: ‘Investigating the Metastatic Potential of Prostate Cancer Extracellular Vesicles in Patient Derived Explants’ and she is supervised by Dr Antoinette Perry, Associate Professor in Cell and Molecular Biology at the School of Biology and Environmental Science and Dr Margaret Mc Gee, Associate Professor from the School of Biomolecular and Biomedical Science. Read more about it in the ICS newletter linked here:

PhD student, Claire Hughes won the science communication competition ENGAGE
2024, an annual competition by UCD’s School of Biomolecular and Biomedical
Science, where late-stage PhDs present their work to a public audience. Claire’s
presentation was entitled ‘Undercover Allies: Cannabis Enhances Chemotherapy’s
Siege on Ovarian Cancer’. Claire’s research is supervised by Assoc. Prof. Antoinette
Perry and Dr Susanne Schilling. Further details on this research can be found here.

CBT lab members have raised over €5,000 for the Irish Cancer Society by running the College of Science and BioSoc bake sale and raffle. This was the third consecutive year that the O’Brien Centre for Science has hosted the event, which has raised amounts of €1,582 (2024) €1,862 (2023) and €1,751 (2022) for the Irish Cancer Society’s Daffodil Day.

The events have been a huge success, with students, faculty, and staff donating baked goods and raffle prizes. Several businesses have also kindly donated prizes to the raffle, including Harvey Norman; Tropical Popical; Clayton Hotels; Farmer Browns; IMC Cinema; Lidl; JustEat; New Harmony Holistics; Butlers Chocolate; UCD College Collection; UCD Cinema; and Pi Restaurant.

CBT lab researchers and PPI members were awarded the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Achievement of the Year Award at the 2024 Irish Cancer Society Research Awards. The project “Broadening Patient Involvement in Ovarian Cancer Research” ensures the patient voice is incorporated into the ovarian cancer research conducted in the lab. The researchers include Claire Hughes, Adele Connor, Asia Jordan, Lea Schäfer, Dr Antoinette Perry, Dr Arman Rahman, Yvonne O’Meara, Teerna Banerjee and Chowdhury Arif Jahangir. The PPI panel members include Brigid Carr, Katayoun Bahramian, Ingrid Halligan Dunne, Lorraine McNally and Deirdre O’ Raw. Find out more about the project here.

Haleema Azam from the Prencipe’s team successfully defended her PhD work titled ‘Investigating the common molecular networks of the Androgen Receptor and Serum Response Factor pathways in castrate resistant prostate cancer’ on the 15th of January 2024. Many thanks to the examiners, Prof. Antoinette Perry (UCD) and Prof. Marianna Kruithof-de julio (University of Bern).

Final year PhD student, Haleema Azam, was among the finalists for the Gold Medal at the 20th anniversary of the Conway Research festival on the 20th of October 2023. Haleema presented her work on investigating the interactome of the androgen receptor and serum response factor in advanced prostate cancer to generate a pipeline of future therapeutic targets.

More details on this work can be found in her latest publication: Azam H et al. Cell Cycle. 2023;22(14-16):1759-1776. doi: 10.1080/15384101.2023.2229713. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37377210/

Congratulation to the team of Dr Antoinette Perry, Asia Jordan, Adele Connor and Ross Nelson for their success in the midst of very steep competition in winning the UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme Award for epiCaPture.  Antoinette and her team have developed a novel urine DNA test for aggressive prostate cancer.  Its tumor specificity out-performs that of prostate-specific antigen (greater than 3 ng/mL). Used as an adjunct to prostate-specific antigen, epiCaPture could aid patient stratification to determine need for biopsy.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30801051/

Movember is an annual event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and men’s suicide. The annual fund-raising activities spearheaded by the Prof. Bill Watson and Amanda O’Neill to raise awareness of men’s Health issues went virtual this year with Prof. William Gallagher winning the Mo’ mask competition with his lab inspired Mo and Dr. Omri Teltsh’s yummy sprout recipe being selected for the Mo’ cook book.

The Lunaphore Immuno-Oncology Grant Program has been designed with the intention of helping in the research of immuno-oncology by providing innovative instruments based on a microfluidic technology to perform mIF staining.  Dr. Rahman and Chowdhury Arif Jahangir won 1st prize for a project titled “Exploration of the Interplay between Master Transcriptional Regulators and Immune Cells within the Tumour Microenvironment of Breast Cancer AND Comparison of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) inflammatory profiles in individuals with and without COVID-19 infection” is a LabSat® Research system.  This system which offers ultra-rapid turnover time for multiplex staining, and will be embedded in the Precision Oncology Ireland tissue imaging platform.

International Hundred K+ Cohorts Consortium (IHCC) – one of their inaugural funding awards to D. Hughes as PI: ‘Exploring the role of genetically determined BMI in infancy, childhood and early adulthood on colorectal cancer development in later life’ (2021-mid2022; 18 months), $145,300

Visiting short term scientific mission awarded to Mr Petr Holý (PhD student in the Biomedical Center, Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, Charles University, Czech Republic under the supervision of Dr Pavel Soucek) to spend 6 weeks in David’s lab by the COST Action CA17118 ‘Identifying Biomarkers Through Translational Research for Prevention and Stratification of Colorectal Cancer (TRANSCOLONCAN.Eu)’, €2,500

David has also been elected Governing Council Member, Irish Cancer Epidemiology Network (2020)