Sabancı University BIO research assistant and doctoral student Cemile Uslu became one of the people honored with the Global Scholar-in-Training Award at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting held in Chicago this year.
Cemile Uslu's study, which won the Global Scholar-in-Training Award from among 400 applicants, also won TÜBİTAK 2232A and TÜBİTAK 1001 incentives. You can read the study published in the journal Redox Biology this month at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40253748/
OXPHOS Inhibition Eliminates Chemotherapy Resistance in Triple Negative Breast Cancer
Cemile Uslu gave the following information about the study on triple negative breast cancer:
“We are working with drug-resistant breast cancer cell lines and trying to make these cells responsive to chemotherapy. In our study, we observed an increase in the mitochondria-based respiration (OXPHOS-oxidative phosphorylation) rate and mitochondrial activity of drug-resistant breast cancer cells. We made them open to chemotherapy by targeting this mechanism. For this purpose, we targeted mitochondria and OXPHOS and inhibited mitochondria using antimicrobial agents, namely antibiotics, since they are organelles derived from bacteria. For this purpose, we tested more than 100 antibiotics and selected the most effective ones. And we found some cellular mechanisms of how these antibiotics work. We showed that tumor progression was significantly less in mice treated with the antibiotic we selected. With this study, we have shown that using antibiotics together with chemotherapy in cancer treatment, especially in resistant cancer types, can provide significant progress in the treatment of patients.”
