When you think of graduate school, what comes to mind?
Lots of lectures? Tons of textbooks? Mountains of memorization?
Van Andel Institute Graduate School’s Ph.D. program in molecular and cellular biology takes a different approach. Our students are immersed in research as key members of our world-class labs early on. As a result, they make outstanding contributions that advance our understanding of health and disease.
Here are seven recent studies that feature our graduate students as co-authors.
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- Revealed how loss of function in the NF1 gene contributes to breast cancer development and progression.
The study illuminates how damage to NF1 derails cells’ normal metabolic balance, allows cells to proliferate unchecked and disrupts important cellular communication channels. The findings also highlight NF1 and cancer cell metabolism as potential targets for new cancer therapies.1
Read more ➔ - Identified a molecular “fingerprint” that distinguishes cells vulnerable to Parkinson’s disease-related proteins.
The discovery offers a first look into the complex molecular changes that occur in brain cells with Lewy bodies, which are key pathological hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.2
Read more ➔ - Discovered how a pair of medications make malignant cells act as if they have a virus, which holds promise for treating colorectal cancers and other solid tumors.
The findings are the foundation for an upcoming Van Andel Institute–Stand Up To Cancer© (SU2C) Epigenetics Dream Team Phase I clinical trial to evaluate this combination in people with cancer.3
Read more ➔ - Discovered immune cells use two different routes to produce acetyl-CoA, an essential metabolite required to fight infection and cancer.
The findings could help improve immunotherapies by revealing how diet can boost immune cell function.4
Read more ➔ - Determined how two important parts of a cellular communication pathway called Wnt work together.
Problems with Wnt are well-known contributors to cancer. Better understanding how pieces of this important pathway interact may offer potentially powerful new targets for cancer treatment.5
Read more ➔ - Uncovered why a certain subtype of endometriosis-related ovarian cancer is resistant to treatment.
Two types of endometriosis-related ovarian cancer arise from the same cells but likely at different stages of the menstrual cycle — a nuance that significantly influences treatment response. The findings have implications for better understanding and treating clear cell ovarian carcinoma, which is resistant to chemotherapy, and endometrioid ovarian carcinoma, which better responds to therapy.6
Read more ➔ - Identified more than 1,000 previously undetected proteins in common metabolite samples, which persist despite extraction methods to weed them out.
The findings have far-reaching implications for the design of metabolomics experiments, which are widely used to study the intricacies of metabolism and its roles in health and disease.7
Read more ➔
- Revealed how loss of function in the NF1 gene contributes to breast cancer development and progression.
Funding
The research reported in this publication was supported by:
1 Van Andel Institute; NF Michigan; and Bee Brave.
2 Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s under award no. ASAP-020616 (PI: Thomas Biederer, Ph.D., Yale University [subaward to Michael Henderson, Ph.D.]) and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R01AG077573 (Henderson).
3 National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award nos. P50CA254897 (Issa, Baylin and Jones; sub-project 7830, Rothbart) and F32CA225043 (Chomiak); and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R35GM124736 (Rothbart). Scott Rothbart, Ph.D., was supported by a Research Scholar Grant (RSG-21-031-01-DMC) from the American Cancer Society. Rochelle L. Tiedemann, Ph.D., was supported by the American Cancer Society–Michigan Cancer Research Fund Postdoctoral Fellowship (PF-16-245-01-DMC).
4 Van Andel Institute; the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award no. T32CA251066 (Watson; PI: P. Jones); the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation under award no. DRG-#2495-23 (Watson); and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R01AI165722 (R. Jones).
Roy is supported by the Fonds de Recherche due Québec – Santé (FRQS) and the Cancer Research Society under award no. 192049. Krawczyk is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under award no. R21AI153997. Ma is supported by a Cancer Research Institute Fellowship and a Salk Pioneer Fund Postdoctoral Scholar Award. Kaech is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease of the National Institutes of Health under award nos. R01AI066232 and R21AI151986. Jones also is supported by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group Distinguished Investigator Program and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
5 National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R00HL133458 (Grainger); the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R35GM142779 (Grainger); the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R01AI171984 (Triche, Krawczyk and Prokop); the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF, an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, under award no. DAF2022-249404 (Triche); and the Michelle Lunn Hope Foundation (Triche).
6 National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award no. R37CA230748 (Shen). Heinze was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (HE 8699/1–1).
7 Van Andel Institute’s Core Technologies and Services (Mass Spectrometry Core and Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core); Van Andel Institute’s Metabolism and Nutrition (MeNu) Program; and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award no. T32CA251066 (P. Jones).
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or other funders.