Dr. Huang’s lab focuses on the study of ovarian cancer. She is specifically interested in studying the tumor microenvironment, or how the environment around a tumor affects the way it functions. My project will focus on the relationship between age and how receptive cancer cell lines are to chemotherapy. Previous studies have shown that older patients suffering from ovarian cancer have significantly worse outcomes than those that are younger. My project seeks to understand some of the mechanisms that may lead to the worse outcomes among older patients.
In all honesty, I don’t have all of the details about my project ironed out just yet because my professor has been out of the lab for the last two weeks on a previously planned vacation. But, she gave me a basic outline of my project and some literature to look at before I got the chance to get started working on it when she’s back. I’ll be culturing a cancer cell line, HEYA8, to look at the effects of aging on ovarian cancer. These cancer cells will be cultured in the medium from preadipocytes. Preadipocytes are fat precursor cells and they are part of the tumor microenvironment for ovarian cancer tumors. I’ll end up comparing how sensitive these ovarian cancer cells are to chemotherapy depending on whether they were grown in medium from aged vs. young preadipocytes. I will also be culturing the preadipocytes myself, and they will be cultured at different doubling times in order to create the aged vs. young lines. I’ll be conducting chemosensitivity tests on the cancer cell lines in order to evaluate if the age of the preadipocytes makes a difference.
