Congratulations to Benjamin Paik, attachment student from Dr Alan Prem Kumar’s group, who received the Gold Award for Best Podium Presentation at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BES) 12th Scientific Meeting held on 19 May 2018, National University of Singapore.
The BES 2018 is an annual symposium organized to provide a platform for students from junior colleges, polytechnics, undergraduate and graduate levels to interact, facilitating the sharing of biomedical engineering knowledge between individuals who share similar interests.
It was heartening to see the continuous hard work and effort invested by participants who presented their projects, many of which were highly innovative and brought a breath of fresh air to Singapore’s biomedical sciences scene. The keynote addresses shared at the symposium also brought to light how biomedical engineering is revolutionizing patient diagnosis, care and treatment. Overall, it was an enriching experience for Benjamin who learnt and interacted with other participants of the symposium, some of which hailed from overseas.
Mitochondrial-Targeting Anticancer Drugs: Characterization of a novel “mitocan” for clinical utility in the treatment of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive, invasive and fast-growing form of breast cancer that is unresponsive to anti-hormonal chemotherapy. Currently, TNBC patients rely on harsher treatments like radiotherapy, which is nonselective and kills healthy cells too, leading to debilitating side effects, or surgery, which still necessitates the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy to shrink the primary tumor to improve the chance of breast conservation. As such, the development of a potent and selective drug to fight TNBC is an unmet medical need. Mitochondria in aggressive cancers, especially TNBC, are highly active and hence are an attractive target for anticancer agents to exert selective potency against TNBC cells while sparing non-tumorigenic cells. Herein, we screen 6 mitochondrial-targeting anticancer drugs (mitocans) for their potency against TNBC cells and found MitoTam, a novel derivative of tamoxifen, to be the most potent. MitoTam also selectively killed TNBC cells at drug concentrations nontoxic to non-tumorigenic cells. Further characterization of MitoTam’s mechanism of action revealed its ability to impair mitochondrial respiration, induce mitochondrial ROS production, induce apoptosis and cell cycle arrest, abrogate JAK2-STAT3 signalling and decrease expression of genes transcriptionally controlled by STAT3. This validates MitoTam to be a selectively potent anticancer agent against TNBC, because its effects go beyond just impairing mitochondria.