Cancer-fighting Rice graduate student wins prestigious fellowship

Manuela Sushnitha will develop leukocyte-derived nanoparticles to combat breast cancer

By Shawn Hutchins
Special to Rice News

Rice bioengineering graduate student Manuela Sushnitha has been selected for a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award by the National Cancer Institute to develop a nanotherapy that attacks cancer stem cells.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains a clinical and therapeutic challenge because of its ability to act like stem cells and produce aggressive cancer cell lines that drive metastasis.

Rice graduate student Manuela Sushnitha won a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award to develop a nanotherapy that attacks cancer stem cells.

“Much of the decline in death rates associated with other subtypes of breast cancer has been due to the development of therapies that target the estrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors,” said Sushnitha, who is in her third year of doctoral studies. “In contrast, patients diagnosed with TNBC have not benefited from these targeted treatments because the biomarker profile of this specific cancer is not the same.”

TNBC’s aggressive nature has been blamed on the presence of breast cancer stem cells, a population of tumor-initiating cells that are highly resistant to conventional chemotherapy and radiation, Sushnitha said.

Although a targeted therapy specific to TNBC has yet to be developed, Sushnitha said recent research has focused on understanding the role of the Janus kinase (JAK) and STAT3 signaling pathway in supporting the growth of these breast cancer stem cells and driving TNBC metastasis.

Using this knowledge, she plans to develop a nanoparticle that integrates proteins found on the membranes of immune-system leukocytes, or white blood cells, to target tumors. The particles would also encapsulate drugs to inhibit the JAK/STAT3 pathway and reduce the cancer stem cell population within the tumor.

Sushnitha and her advisers — Omid Veiseh, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice, and Ennio Tasciotti, professor of orthopedic surgery at Houston Methodist Hospital’s Institute for Academic Medicine — will work with Houston Methodist breast medical oncology specialist Jenny Chang to develop a patient-derived model of TNBC to evaluate the particles.