(Spencer, Sabrina Leigh - 2021) -- Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award
Overview
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Sabrina L. Spencer, assistant professor of biochemistry and member of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of five new winners of a 2021 Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation announced recently. Until recently, basic research in oncology has primarily focused on mutations that drive cancer drug resistance. While the contribution of mutations to cancer drug resistance is undeniable, how cells adapt to drugs on short time scales, long before genetic mutations arise, is very poorly understood. Dr. Spencer will use multi-day time-lapse microscopy to study how individual cancer cells adapt to drugs targeting cell proliferation during the first few days of drug treatment. She will identify the molecular events that allow individual rogue cells to escape from drug action. These early drug “escapees” could represent a seed population enabling development of permanent (genetic) drug resistance and, if understood, could be therapeutically eliminated to reduce tumor relapse. Dr. Spencer is co-funded with the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research.
