News
April 20, 2012
“We emphasize hands-on student participation at the Center
and provide training opportunities for select graduate and undergraduate
students,” says Daniel Frigo, assistant professor and supervisor to the award
recipients. “These awards recognize the drive of these students and are
significant accomplishments in their emerging cancer research careers.” For the Outstanding Abstract Award, Tennakoon will receive a
travel award stipend to present his abstract at ENDO 2012. The annual meeting
will convene in Houston, June 23-26. The abstract, “Androgens Regulate Prostate
Cancer Cell Growth and Survival via an AMPK-PGC1[alpha]-Mediated Metabolic
Switch,” examines how the class of hormones called androgens promote prostate
cancer. Tennakoon is a fifth year graduate student, Ph.D. candidate and member of
the Frigo lab group. He previously received interdisciplinary training in
genomics under assistant professor Preethi Gunaratne. Through the SURF program, Do and Tran each will receive a
stipend and spend the summer pursuing research projects in the Frigo lab on a
full-time basis. The program includes a weekly lecture series and will conclude
on Undergraduate Research Day 2012 in October. For the event, Do and Tran will both present a
research poster and abstract summarizing how they spent the summer. As a full-time researcher with the Frigo lab group, Tran
will be testing whether a specific splice variant found in the prostate has
increased autonomous cancer signaling activity. The project will be an
extension of his current lab work and will set the foundation for potential
future mechanistic studies. Tran’s studies will be the first performed with the
Center’s new animal imaging core, awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research
Institute of Texas. Do also joins the lab full-time to identify druggable
kinases that contribute to the pathogenesis of prostate cancer. Do will utilize
a revolutionary chemical library with the goal of isolating novel therapeutic
targets for treating advanced prostate cancer. The scale of her project is
unique for the undergraduate level and will incorporate resources provided by the
pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Roche. As a principal investigator at the Center, Frigo leads a
group of research technicians, postdoctoral fellows and students in pursuing a
better understanding of the function of nuclear receptors in cancer through
interdisciplinary research. The long-term goal of the group is to develop novel
therapies that target newly identified mechanisms mediated by nuclear
receptors. Frigo also spearheaded the effort to acquire the new animal imaging
core. Established in 2009, CNRCS is the focal point of the UH
health initiative. Led by Dr. Jan-Åke Gustafsson, a world-renowned expert in the field of
nuclear receptors, CNRCS researchers are involved in many aspects of nuclear
receptor research, all focused on understanding the roles of these receptors in
health and disease. CNRCS researchers are working toward the goal of finding
new treatments for an array of significant diseases including cancer, diabetes
and metabolic syndrome and degenerative neurologic diseases. Working from the
Center's world-class labs, CNRCS researchers combine interdisciplinary research
and dynamic collaboration with the Texas Medical Center and industry partners. For
more information on the SURF program, visit http://www.uh.edu/honors/undergraduate-research/uh-research/surf/index.php. ###
Three students at the UH Center for Nuclear Receptors and
Cell Signaling (CNRCS) have been selected for a trio of awards. Graduate student Jayantha Tennakoon received an
Outstanding Abstract Award for ENDO 2012, the upcoming 94th Annual Meeting and
Expo of The Endocrine Society. Undergraduate students Hannah Do and Peter Tran
each were selected for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
awarded by the UH Office of Undergraduate Research.