October 28, 2015

Creating new chemical structures that fight breast cancer cells

My name is Dr. Alison Thompson, and I am a chemistry professor. One of my lab’s research projects involves designing, and then making, new chemical structures that we believe will be active against breast cancer cells. These structures are based on a natural product that bacteria produce – and it is pink! Our goal is to design new chemical structures that are selectively active against breast cancer cells, meaning that side-effects would be reduced over current pharmaceutical choices. To do this we use “medicinal chemistry”, which is the type of chemistry that is used to invent new drugs.

Kate-lyn Lund (left) and Dr. Carlotta Figliola

The photo shows two trainees, Kate-lyn Lund (left; she passed her M.Sc. last week; congratulations!) and Dr. Carlotta Figliola, celebrating a successful synthesis of one of our new structures – we made it from scratch, it’s a long process and the trainees learned a lot of skills that will be of use to them in their careers as chemists.

Thank you to BCSC for your research support!

– Dr. Alison Thompson
Faculty of Science Killam Professor of Chemistry, Dalhousie University

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