NevBio Luncheon - Van Vo, Cancer Researcher at UNLV on April 30, 2013

Van Vo, Cancer Researcher at UNLV

Tuesday, April 30th

McCormick & Schmicks

11:30 am check-in, 12 noon lunch & talk

RSVP here. $30. Students & researchers, no cost.

Van Vo is a PhD candidate at UNLV. Her research involves developing cisplatin analogues for the treatment of cancer

The In Vitro Cytotoxic Effects of Cisplatin Analogues in Cancer and Normal Cells by Van Vo, Ontida Tanthmanatham, Haesook Han, Pradip K. Bhowmik and Bryan L. Spangelo, UNLV Department of Chemistry

About 50% of cancer chemotherapeutic regimens consist of platinum-based drugs. Cisplatin (CDDP) was the first platinum(II) complex approved for clinical treatment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1978. Along with cisplatin, two other platinum(II) complexes, carboplatin and oxaliplatin, are now approved for use worldwide.

Although commonly prescribed, clinical application of platinum drugs is limited due to narrow spectra of activity, cellular resistance, and toxic side effects. As a consequence of

these drawbacks, the search for improved drugs continues with the goal of discovering compounds with greater efficacy and reduced toxicity.

Cisplatin is not routinely used for the treatment of breast cancer since many breast cancers are resistant to cisplatin treatment; however, it has been reported that some breast

cancers are sensitive to cisplatin. In an effort to develop improved platinum drugs for the treatment of breast cancers, new platinum-complexes have been synthesized.

 In vitro studies in various human breast cancer cells demonstrated that these compounds are much more potent than cisplatin. One of the synthesized complexes was also tested in a normal human breast cell line and was found to be more toxic to the normal cells compared to cancer cells. However, when this compound was tested in vivo in a mouse model, the animals survived after administration of the compound at a dose of 12.5 mg/kg/day for three days. Further studies are required to assess the potential translation of these compounds into clinical use.