Dr. Travis Denton, College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science
Developing techniques to selectively kill cancer cells, but leave normal cells alone.
The focus of the Denton Lab is medicinal chemistry, which means they build new therapies (drugs) using chemistry approaches. Think of a drug as a cool sculpture you or your child has built with Legos, tinker toys or in Minecraft. Each sculpture is made up of the same building blocks, but the number of sculptures one can make is nearly endless. They use a sculpture that already has a purpose (like a drug that can relieve symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease), partially take the sculpture apart and rebuild it a little bit differently. Then they test to see if it is better than the original. If it is better, they make sure to record how they did it and then try again, by using the same size bricks but of a different color, etc. or by modifying a different part of the sculpture, etc.
The specific research project for a Teacher Partner to join is focused on a newly-identified pathway for cancer cells to feed themselves: the ω-amidase pathway. Cancer cells appear to use this pathway when other pathways are blocked. Dr. Denton and his lab group believes that if this and other pathways are blocked, they could kill cancer cells. The teacher would engage with Dr. Denton to learn lab techniques and receive instruction on how to perform the specific experiments related to the cancer project, such as Western blotting. Over time the teacher would transition to working with a research assistant professor, graduate students, a technician and undergraduate students and ultimately transition to performing the experiments independently.