Teresa Rapp

Of course, lots of people have cured cancer in mice. It still remains to be seen if this therapy will make it into the clinic as an alternative to cisplatin! Overall, very interesting paper!

They used it in vivo! You can see localization (red) of the Ru nanoparticles right where the tumor (blue) is. They also saw reduction of tumor volume in this mouse model.

To improve selective uptake in tumors, they make nanoparticles by mixing their best Ru compound with transferrin. This led to beautiful pictures (and similar uptake of the Ru in plated cells, which doesn't tell us much until...

When looking at the mechanism of toxicity, the authors found significant localization in the mitochondria, and performed thorough studies of how their best compound disrupted mitochondrial function especially in cancer cells.

This closeted bioengineer is very pleased to see they tested their best compound against tumor organoids as well as 2D cell culture, a very important step!! It's FAR easier to kill cells when they're plated in a dish, vs. growing in large colonies with poor diffusion.

I'm going to call them out for not naming these in their figures, but here are the three compounds they studied! Spoiler alert, the really big, bulky, and hydrophobic one in the middle was the most toxic, with an IC50 down around 2 uM.

Discovery and antitumor evaluation of a mitochondria-targeting ruthenium complex for effective cancer therapy Ruthenium-based metallodrugs have garnered attention as a promising alternative for anticancer therapy, aiming to overcome chemoresistance and severe …

This week's #paperoftheweek is brought to you by our Research Assistant Leah Morzenti! She introduced us to a paper that probed different fully chelated Ru complexes to find the most toxic one... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Amazing #youngscientists and #students mixer at #SFBChicago featuring the GOATs Dan Lemyre and Shena Seppanen!

In Chicago for the SFB National conference this week! One of grander locations? Happy to be here!!

Lastly, when they work, they REALLY work! Mouse studies showed that in 2/8 mice the tumors were completely eliminated, AND the mice were resistant to rechallenge. Preliminary work in this preprint suggested that elevated levels of IL-12 in the tumor may hold the key to persistent long-term health.

Of particular interest to us was their preliminary studies on how these Ru complexes act to kill cells. Their work to identify the key role of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in leading to cell death is inspiring our future studies as well! ATF-4 and CHOP are two markers they tracked to probe this

A huge improvement in this study vs. previous work is the use of 3D tumoroid models to accurately predict toxicity. These tumoroids are composed of both cancer cells (4T1 murine breast cancer) and macrophages (BALB-c). The loss of live cells in the last image highlights the efficacy of treatment.

Authors Madeline Denison et al. explored 4 different proposed anticancer compounds to unravel the likely cellular mechanisms of activity against various mouse and human tumor cell lines AND in vivo cell models. Spoiler alerts: they found that 2 and 4 were the most interesting!

Ru(II)-Photoactive Agents for Targeting ER Stress and Immunogenic Cell Death Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising avenue for cancer treatment by bolstering the immune system’s ability to recognize and attack cancer cells. Photodynamic therapy shows potential in enhancing a...

#paperoftheweek starts this week in the Rapp Lab! This week's paper is brought to you by Evalyn Smith, our Master's Intern who discovered this deep dive into toxicity mechanisms for ruthenium anticancer complexes: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Rapp Lab undergrads are flying his with several honors and awards! Transfer student Jonny just received the FYRE scholarship from UO's Undergraduate Research Program to support summer research, and junior Pearstin is a Knight Campus Undergrad Scholar! Proud of you both!