Amanda Leiter: Transitioning from Basic to Clinical Research BACK

Published by AFAR

This summer, I am working on a lab project that investigates the mechanism of prostate cancer metastasis to bone. I hope to focus on gaining information to prevent morbidity and mortality associated with prostate cancer, a disease that commonly affects many aging men. I am working with Dr. Alice Levine to examine a marker of prostate cancer, prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP), and how this compound affects prostate cancer metastasis to bone. At this point, Dr. Levine and I have formulated two hypotheses on this mechanism, both involving RANKL signaling (a major mediator of bone growth and metastases), but differing in the mediation of this signal.

I've learned that it's hard to predict the trajectory of a research project several months in advance, as my project design has already changed slightly from the plan back in January. I was originally going to do further tests on tartrate-bisphosphonate compounds, but Dr. Levine and our research collaborators realized that we should study the mechanism of how PAP affects bone and how these bisphosphonates actually affect PAP signaling in bone. Dr. Alex Kirschenbaum, a urologist at Mount Sinai, is another mentor for my project and he is really great at explaining the clinical relevance of my project and how PAP could become a crucial clinical marker for prostate cancer. We are hoping that my basic science experiment will provide information that will lead to more effective treatment and/or prevention of bone metastases in prostate cancer.

I have started by familiarizing myself with the lab and the specific cell lines I'll be working with. Lab research, as expected, does not always go according to plan and one of the cell lines that I need for my experiments is taking a longer time to grow than anticipated. At this point, I am continuing to design my experiment, reading literature about prostate cancer, and practicing cell culture and lab techniques. In addition to my own experiment, I am also collaborating with Dr. AnaLisa DiFeo, who has another lab at Mount Sinai that is also working on PAP signaling in prostate cancer. This lab is conducting mouse in vivo experiments and I am very interested to learn about using mouse models in cancer research. At this point, I will soon be transfecting prostate cancer cells with the PAP gene for her experiments and I am looking forward to working with her.

I have already learned a lot about bone modeling, the mechanism of prostate cancer metastasis, and about current treatments for prostate cancer. I have built a foundation on which I will execute my co-culture experiments and analyze the results. I am continuing to read literature on the topic of prostate cancer bone metastases and hopefully will be well versed in the topic by the end of the summer. And finally, I have enjoyed working with great research mentors like Dr. Levine, Dr. Kirschenbaum, and Dr. DiFeo.

Amanda Leiter
Mount Sinai School of Medicine

 

"Diary of an MSTAR Student" follows scholars in the 2011 Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) Program, highlighting their summer experiences. As they continue their path of research, training and clinical practice, read their daily thoughts at www.afar.org/mstarblog. New diary entries are posted every day, so check back soon.