Current involved students include Sofia Cuello as project lead, Andrew R, Ryan, and Aysel Khalil. Alumni from this project include Jarred Miller.
This group of motivated students focus on treating drug resistant breast cancer cells with a series of antioxidants to overcome drug resistance and aid adjuvant therapies for the improvement of breast cancer treatment and patient outcome. Currently, physicians do not advise cancer patients to consume antioxidants due to the limited research on whether or not antioxidants support cancer proliferation or induce cell death. This lab aims to fill part of that research gap through extensive investigation into the following antioxidants: shikonin, capsaicin, resveratrol, and more recently Padina gymnaspora, an algae commonly found throughout Tampa Bay.
For shikonin and algae, we hypothesize a respiratory shift being the key factor for inducing cell death within treated cells, with a change from Warburg phenotypes to OXPHOS phenotypes within the drug resistant cancer. This respiratory shift has been seen in previous studies by Dr. Dobrinski, but in ovarian cancer. The capsaicin and resveratrol have also yielded success for inducing cell death, however the mechanism by which it occurs is still under investigation by our lab. Our study utilizes MDA-MB-231 cells to represent drug resistant, metastatic cancer, and MCF7 cells as the non-drug resistant, non-metastasizing control. Through multiple assays, biostatistics in R-lab, as well as skills in cell culture, qPCR, in-vitro analysis, investigation, collaboration, and extensive problem solving, these students have gathered excellent results throughout the duration of this ongoing study.
Students involved in this project have received University of Tampa research grants including the Summer Undergraduate Research Forum grant (’23 and ‘24) and Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry grant (’24-’25).