Cancer Biology and Therapeutics Lab

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)

The CBT laboratory is delighted to congratulate Adele on her success in obtaining a PhD scholarship from the Irish Cancer Society to undertake translational research in ovarian cancer with Dr. Antoinette Perry.

Ovarian cancer has poor prognosis and shockingly low levels of publications relative to other cancers (despite it being the 4^th most common female cancer in Ireland) so it is hoped that this research will contribute to an under-developed field and ultimately have a positive impact on the patients who suffer from this disease.

Adele has been a critical member of the epiCaPture team (that recently won the UCD Venture Launch Accelerator Programme Award) and is excited to start this new research from January 2021.

Ireland’s first national preclinical imaging centre (NPIC) will provide enhanced research data to inform new clinical trials and improve patient outcomes. It is being established through a €3.4 million award from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under their research infrastructure programme.   The Centre will be led by Professor Annette Byrne (RSCI) in partnership with Professor William Gallagher (UCD) and Professor Abhay Pandit (CÚRAM, NUI Galway).  Emer Conroy and Dr. Jeffrey Glennon will lead the UCD aspect of this distributed infrastructure.  UCD will receive €2.01 million of the award funding and have committed to complementing this with an additional €645,558 in co-funding. This will support equipment purchase, refurbishment and technical support

MRI diffusion tensor imaging reveals white matter changes in the brain across genotypes

.