March 23, 2016

Attempting to inhibit breast cancer proliferation

Hi everyone! My name is Alexandra Hauser-Kawaguchi and I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry at Western University. I work in Dr. Len Luyt’s lab at London Health Sciences Centre’s London Regional Cancer Program.

You may remember seeing my blog post last year.

Since then, I’ve continued to study the interactions between the mini-protein known as 7 kDa RHAMM and the molecules called peptide ligands. If we can discover a peptide that has better binding to 7 kDa RHAMM than the natural ligand, we can potentially inhibit the actions that lead to breast cancer proliferation.

It’s taken a while, but we’ve finally found that the best way to study these interactions is by using the technique called surface plasmon resonance, which studies the binding interactions in real time.

This past year has been an exciting one outside the lab as well. I presented my work at the Boulder Peptide Symposium in September, where I also learned about some interesting new techniques. I’ve already started using some of them in the lab … updates to come in my next blog post!

Thank you to BCSC for your trainee support!
– Alexandra Hauser-Kawaguchi, PhD candidate
Pamela Greenaway-Kohlmeier Translational Breast Cancer Research Unit, London Health Sciences Centre

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