A group of Hamilton College students under the direction of Professor of Chemistry George Shields and Dreyfus Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Chemistry Steve Feldgus are doing basic cancer research at Hamilton this summer. Amber Gillis '06, Megan Dunn, Becky Shepherd '06, Christy House '06, Dave Kelland '05, Chantelle Rein '03, Sarah Taylor '03 and Junchan Hong '05 are all joining the effort in the battle against cancer.
Rein is studying the importance of different parts of naturally occurring anti-cancer molecules, in order to understand what raises and lowers the barriers to Bergman cyclization. Bergman cyclization is the reaction which starts the process of cleaving DNA, resulting in the destruction of cancerous cells. Unfortunately, the molecules Rein is studying kill both cancerous and healthy cells. Her long-term goals for the project include developing a new class of drugs that will only attack tumor cells.
Kelland, Gillis, House, Shepard and Dunn are working as part of Hamilton's Molecular Education and Research Consortium in Undergraduate Computational Chemistry (MERCURY.) Using Hamilton's new supercomputers, this group is able to build and test molecules that may be used by the entire group in their cancer research.
While Rein experiments with larger molecules that make up the actual cancer fighting drugs, Kelland works with smaller molecules. These smaller molecules have the same functional groups as the larger molecules and are therefore valuable research tools. "With the smaller molecules, you can discover more information more quickly," said Kelland. "You can use this information as an indicator for the large molecules, that take more time to test."
Sarah Taylor '03 is studying computational approaches to anti-cancer drug design. A biochemistry major, she is researching breast cancer drugs that inhibit estrogen receptors. Taylor is studying how the structures of FDA approved anti-cancer drugs such as Tamoxifen, and other tested inhibitors relate to their activity.
By using a 3D-QSAR program called Catalyst she will generate a three-dimensional arrangement of the chemical features necessary for molecular activity known as pharmacophore. With this pharmacophore Taylor will search for other potential anti-breast cancer drugs and then test their inhibitory activity against a breast cancer cell line
These computational chemists hope to one day be leaders in the fight against cancer, but in the mean time they are taking important first steps to be part of the solution at Hamilton.
