Working with Dr. Amy Ham, associate professor in pharmaceutical, social and administrative science in the College of Pharmacy, two pairs of students from the past two years have shed light on the proteomic profiles of exosomes from colon cancer cells. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that act in cell-cell communication and are involved in the progression and metastasis of colon cancer cells.
Libby Nunn, senior biology major, and Nancy Sharkawy, junior neuroscience major, completed this work for the 2018-19 year. In June, Nunn presented a poster entitled “Comparison of Sample Digestion and Fractionation Methods for Protein Biomarker Discovery in Exosomes” at the 67th Annual American Society for Mass Spectrometry Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Karina Glushchak, senior neuroscience major, and Aditi Bush, B.S. in Neuroscience, 2019, worked on the project during the 2017-2018 academic year. Glushchak presented a poster on more preliminary data from this same project at the 66th Annual ASMS conference in June of 2018 in San Diego, California. The conference was attended by more than 6,500 scientists from around the world and included approximately 3,000 papers presented as posters and talks.
Both years, the Belmont students participated in an undergraduate research competition at the conference, which included an additional presentation of their work.