NUACHTÁN SAOR IN AISCE VOL.19 Issue 6. 21 NOV 2017
Student Independent News NUI Galway breast cancer research may save lives
Right on track
By Martha Brennan
Competitors at the 5k Charity Run Day hosted by NUI Galway Students’ Union make their way through campus.
Charity boxing organisers in bid to raise €30,000 By Connell McHugh
When you think of boxing or any form of martial arts, people such as Katie Taylor, Mohammad Ali and, of late, Conor McGregor come to mind. What you may not think of is thirty amateur college students stepping into the ring to bring glory to their university while raising money for charity. That is exactly what is happening tomorrow 22 November. Fifteen students from NUI Galway will take on fifteen students from GMIT in the Radisson Blu Hotel. Training has been taking place twice a week, each Tuesday in either the Bailey Allen Hall or in GMIT, and each Thursday in Oughterard Boxing Club. 1,200 tickets are to be sold for the event. Projected figures bring the money that will be raised to €30,000. All money raised will be split between the chosen charities of NUI Galway, GMIT and NUI Galway’s Cancer Society. The Cancer Society have chosen to raise money for Hand in Hand, a
non-profit organisation which provides the families of children with cancer with much-needed practical support, Milford Care Centre in Limerick, which provides Hospice care and support to families of patients, and the Galway Hospice, based in Renmore. GMIT will be supporting the Special Olympics Ireland, which promotes fun, friendship, sporting opportunities to those with intellectual disabilities, while NUI Galway Students’ Union has chosen to donate to AMACH!, which advocates on behalf of the LGBT community in Galway city and county, and Domestic Violence Response which aims to develop long-term responses that work towards the elimination of domestic violence in Galway. The participants have a €200 fundraising target each, with many of them setting up iDonate pages online and even hosting tea parties in their home towns. They have each been paired with a member of the Cancer Society to help them with their efforts.
Arguably the most anticipated fight of the night will take place between Lorcán Ó Maoileannaigh, NUI Galway’s Students’ Union President and his GMIT counterpart, Mark O’Brien. Speaking to SIN about the event, Lorcán explained how the event came together. “At the start we had to narrow down 117 applications to 15 participants. We chose people on the basis of having a wide variety of representation from clubs, societies, different courses, be it a mature students, postgrad, undergrad, first or fourth year. We’ve a very good spread,” he said. “It was interesting, on the first day of training absolutely nobody knew each other. So that was good, we weren’t picking from the same friend group. The intention was that nobody would have any boxing experience so everybody was starting off from the same platform.” Lorcán also explained how the charities for the Students’ Union this year were chosen.
“Back over the summer we put out a press release asking different organisations to apply to be our chosen charities. We had 90 applications in total. All 15 of us [Students’ Union representatives] sat around the table and we discussed the different criteria we wanted and how to narrow it down to only two. We narrowed in down to 15, then down to five and finally down to two,” he said. The charities were chosen on the basis that every euro raised should have a big impact on the charities and that the impact itself should be a local one. Auditor of the Cancer Society, Marwa El-Gamati, explained that the first iteration of the event, which took place in March, was a “surprising success”. About 500 people attended and €10,000 was raised. “We hope the event will be even better than last year with the inclusion of the unions,” she said. Tickets are on sale from at the NUI Galway SU, and are €25 for non-students and €15 for students. It is a night not to be missed.
Breakthrough research from the Lambe Institute for Translational Research here at NUI Galway has identified a key cause for the spreading of the most aggressive type of breast cancer. The breakthrough comes from a team led by Dr Sharon Glynn from the Discipline of Pathology in the institute. The researchers have discovered that a certain protein in the body, called Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase or iNOS, is a key cause for the aggressive spread of triple-negative breast cancer. Breast cancer is deemed triple negative when the cancer cells test negative for estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and a gene called HER2. Because of the negative result of these hormones, triple-negative breast cancer does not respond to hormonal therapy. This can result in an increased risk of premature death from the disease. Patients who are diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer are limited to chemotherapy and surgery as treatment options. More than one out of every 10 breast cancers are found to be triple-negative and it is the most aggressive form of breast cancer. It is frequently diagnosed in young women, ranging from age thirty and upwards, and there is intense interest in finding new information about this type of breast cancer and for medications that can treat it. Dr Glynn explained that the results from the studies will be used to develop new screening methods to identify patients that are at increased risk of developing the disease.
“The team are focused on developing new therapeutic drugs that will shut down these proteins and reduce the spread of the cancer. Both proteins have been identified as key drivers in the spreading of triple negative breast cancer, and targeting them may save lives,” she said. Dr Glynn’s laboratory has published two landmark papers in international journals, Oncotarget and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The first study by Dr Glynn and her NUI Galway colleagues Dr Pablo Garrido, Dr Aideen Ryan and Professor Grace Callagy found iNOS to be a factor in poor survival rates of Irish breast cancer patients. Between 2000 and 2016, they conducted a study of 206 women diagnosed with breast cancer at Galway University Hospital. They found that patients with increased iNOS expression were at greater risk for the cancer spreading to other parts of the body because their cells were more resistant to chemotherapy. In her second study, Dr Glynn worked with two doctors from the National Cancer Institute in the US. This study, which was edited by world expert and Nobel Laureate, Dr. Louis Ignarro, investigated the role of iNOS and a protein called COX2 in triple-negative breast cancer. The research shows that when they are expressed together in this type of breast cancer, faster tumor growth occurs. This study was carried out with American patients and found that less than 40% of the women with high levels of iNOS and COX2 survived after five years, compared to the survival rate of 95% for women who had low levels of both proteins.