Student Profile: Anatasha Crawford

Tumor Biology PhD Student Wins AACR Minority Scholar Award

Anatasha Crawford, BS, and Rebecca Riggins, PhD, are working together to restore sensitivity to antiestrogen treatments, like Tamoxifen, for breast cancer patients who have become resistant to this class of drugs. Ms. Crawford, now a fifth-year PhD student in Lombardi's Tumor Biology Program, was a 2007 recipient of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Award.

 

 

This award is given annually to a group of junior scientists who are members of minority groups defined by the National Cancer Institute as under-represented in the field of cancer and biomedical research. Ms. Crawford's winning abstract, which she developed into a poster that she presented at the 2008 AACR conference in Los Angeles, examines the role of a single family of proteins in Tamoxifen-resistant breast cancer cells. This protein family is called Bcl-2 and plays a key role in the process of programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

In normal cells that develop abnormalities such as mutations, apoptosis is initiated to prevent cells from getting out of control. But in cancer, apoptosis is blocked, allowing the tumor cells to continue to grow and divide. Bcl-2 is known to regulate how and when programmed cell death occurs, and Dr. Riggins found that the protein behaved differently in cells that were sensitive to Tamoxifen than it did in cells that were resistant. Knowing that Bcl-2 plays a key role in apoptosis, they wanted to see if they could reverse Tamoxifen resistance by blocking the activity of Bcl-2.

Ms. Crawford started working with Dr. Riggins during one of her rotations through different Lombardi laboratories. Once she had completed this segment of the program, which is designed to give students experience in several different laboratories, she chose to focus her thesis research on this protein.

"In one of my classes, I had been studying apoptosis, and I thought it was really interesting," she explained. "When Rebecca presented this project to me, I really understood the concepts well and I thought it was a very important question."

Ms. Crawford is now testing small molecules that stop Bcl-2 from conferring the resistance to antiestrogen drugs like Tamoxifen. These molecules block, or inhibit, the normal function that Bcl-2 plays in the cell, which means that pre-cancerous cells should undergo apoptosis on their own before a cancer can develop. But ultimately, Ms. Crawford and Dr. Riggins see themselves laying the groundwork for a new and more effective generation of drugs that can restore sensitivity to Tamoxifen and other antiestrogens in breast cancer patients.

Beyond working together to develop and test new therapies to one of the key problems in breast cancer treatment, Ms. Crawford and Dr. Riggins, who is her mentor, have something else in common. Both women are here at Lombardi working in the laboratory of Robert Clarke, PhD, DSc, because of their grandmothers.

"I became very interested in breast cancer research when my grandmother had breast cancer. That was the main reason why I came to Lombardi; I wanted to learn in a place that has a focus on cancer research," said Ms. Crawford.

Dr. Riggins joined Lombardi in 2003 as a postdoctoral fellow and was recently promoted to Research Assistant Professor. She received her PhD in microbiology, but focused some of her work on Tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer cells – a field that felt right to her because her grandmother is a breast cancer survivor.

"I came to Lombardi because I wanted to do basic science research that was clinically relevant," Dr. Riggins said, echoing Ms. Crawford's sentiments.

 

Published: June 22, 2009
by Allison Whitney