I sat down this week with Beatriz Martins (junior, medical laboratory science) to talk about her experience in research at Andrews and the kind of work that she is doing with the science department.
How long have you been doing research, and what is the research project you are working on?
I have been doing research with Dr. Denise Smith and Dr. Desmond Murray since the summer after my freshman year. We are currently trying to hybridize a drug called temozolomide—it is a drug for a very aggressive type of brain cancer called glioblastoma. We are trying to hybridize (combine chemically into one molecule) a drug called temozolomide, with different times of amino purines (like adenine and guanine; the most famous amino purines in DNA) that have shown anti-cancer properties. We are going to test the hybridization to see if it is more effective at killing cancer cells than the temozolomide itself.
Why are you trying to hybridize temozolomide specifically?
Temozolomide is a very innovative drug that helps increase the prognosis for glioblastoma. The problem with it, however, is that it methylates DNA—it adds methyl groups to guanine-triplet sequences in the DNA—and human bodies have an enzyme (MGMT) that is designed to remove those methylations. I believe that when the body detects abnormal amounts of methylation, it activates more MGMT to clear it out, which causes the drug to no longer be effective. So we think that combining it with the amino purines will allow it to escape MGMT and pass the blood brain barrier—that is, if we are actually able to synthesize the compounds.
How is the research going?
We have definitely had some challenges, particularly with growing the cells and with equipment. For example: we have had problems with yeast infections, we went on break and the cells starved, or the power went out and our cells froze to death. The main challenge is that the main piece of equipment (MMR) that helps us identify the kinds of molecules we are making broke down. From what I heard, it was very old and it just gave out. We have not had access to it for at least a year now. Without this machine, we can’t move forward with the project because we are not able to see if the molecules that we synthesized were actually the correct molecules we were trying to synthesize. We do have another accompanying machine that we have been trying to use, and it helps some, but it’s really not possible without the MMR.
Since you can’t move forward with the machine broken, what are you currently doing?
I am currently working on growing cancer cells—these cells will be used to test the starting materials (temozolomide and amino purines). At least, I was. All of my cells died in the blackout and so there’s nothing to do but to start again, probably in January. That’s been pretty frustrating.
Would you recommend undergraduate research?
Yeah, I would! It teaches a lot of valuable skills, like patience and attention to detail. I did enjoy some of the time I spent in the lab alone—I got to listen to music and make chemical reactions. That was pretty fun.
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