Tucked away in Dobo Hall, an expansive science building that sits along Chancellor’s Walk, a chemistry lab and a biology lab are home to a team of UNCW students who are developing a new treatment to help patients battling prostate cancer. “It is shocking to me to think about how important the work we are doing is,” said Madeleine Goldthorpe, who is an Honors College student pursuing a biology major and chemistry minor. “As a child, I never thought I’d be involved in this caliber of a project.” Goldthorpe is among more than a dozen UNCW undergraduate and Ph.D. students, primarily female, researching with College of Science and Engineering faculty members Sridhar Varadarajan, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Art Frampton, Department of Biology and Marine Biology.
Helping Prostate Cancer Patients UNCW researchers on the brink of a new treatment discovery BY: KRISSY VICK PHOTO G RAPH Y BY : J E F F J A N OW S K I
The research team’s collective goal is to develop a molecule that can successfully seek and destroy cancerous prostate cells while leaving healthy cells untouched, a process called selective toxicity.
“Our goal is to come up with a more targeted therapy different from the current sledgehammer approach to cancer treatment that causes side effects and kills healthy cells.” – Art Frampton Unlike other pharmaceutical treatments currently available that harm both healthy and cancerous cells, like chemotherapy, the team's work could lead to reduced side effects for cancer patients, as well as mitigate risks for secondary cancers. This isn’t the first time Frampton and Varadarajan have collaborated. In 2021, they published findings about a similar research breakthrough that targeted breast cancer cells. They are also applying the science to brain cancer cells and seeing promising results.
FROM LEFT: Students Monika Nguyen and Nicky Mendoza with Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Sridhar Varadarajan
30 | UNC W M AGAZINE fall 2023
Their prostate cancer research is so compelling that the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute, the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research and the largest funder of cancer research in the world, is funding the project with a $447,000 grant for the next three years.
