PhD student Ylenia Perone won third prize in the Research as Art competition for the Luca Magnani’s lab entry entitled “Drug driven tumour evolution” at this year’s Graduate School PhD Summer Showcase event, which celebrates the research being carried out by the College’s PhD students. The lab’s entry illustrates the different cellular response to the different drugs in artistic form and comes out of the lab’s new research, published in Nature Genetics this January. Below Ylenia describes the research behind the image.
“The hands represent different patients; one has no amplification of the aromatase gene (drawings on the right hand) and one has been offered a type of drug (white pill) that is different from the one (orange pill) being given to the patient that created more copies of the gene (intensified branched drawings on the left hand). With our research, we demonstrate that the choice of therapy has a fundamental influence on the genetic landscape of relapsed tumours. This is why we need to find a way to identify an increase in aromatase gene, early enough that women can be switched to a different drug therapy program before their cancer returns.”
Find out more about the breast cancer research happening in Dr Luca Magnami’s Lab.