A former Meyerhoff Scholar's research could help women with breast cancer.

By Lila Guterman
This article courtesty of UMBC Magazine

Talk to Paula Whittington '01, biological sciences, and you might not guess she's a researcher who's getting potentially life-saving results. Modest and soft-spoken, the former Meyerhoff Scholar recently published the findings from experiments that could help thousands of women with breast cancer.

In her research, Whittington has shown that a form of vaccination using DNA can treat breast cancers that are resistant to other drugs. Her research was done on mice, but if the vaccine works similarly in people, it could give hope to women whose cancers either did not shrink when treated, or whose cancers have come back despite initial treatment success.

Whittington did that research at Wayne State University, where she is a student in the M.D./Ph.D. program. She published it along with her co-workers and her advisor, Wei-Zen Wei, in September in the journal Cancer Research. Whittington defended her dissertation in late 2007 and is now finishing her medical degree – which she hopes to complete in 2010.

The joy in discovery is not just in the brainstorming, says Whittington, but in the process of testing and winnowing that accompanies it.

“I like the creative aspect of research, the idea of coming up with something and then testing it to prove it right or wrong. Then it's really cool that you might actually see a benefit in patients,” she says. “Even just the hope of it is really cool.”

Whittington already has impressed other scientists with her persistence and intelligence. “She's a very hard worker,” says Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, a professor of biological science at UMBC. “She just keeps trying and going for things. She's smart and things work out for her.”

Whittington did research as an undergraduate in the laboratory of Angela Brodie, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center. Brodie says that Whittington “had a spark about her” and impressed her by keeping in touch even after finishing her laboratory work.

“Paula has a lively, thinking mind,” agrees her dissertation adviser, Wei. “She has a lot of interesting ideas.”

It was during her work in Wei's laboratory that Whittington decided to take a cancer vaccine that her adviser has been working on since 1996 and see whether it works for tumors that are resistant to other treatments.

The vaccine is simply DNA injected into a muscle. The cells of the organism – mouse or human – then go to work making the protein encoded by the DNA, thereby alerting the immune system to the protein. Since it is the same protein that is overproduced by cancer cells, the organism’s immune system then attacks any cells that have that protein.

About a quarter of breast cancers produce too much of a protein called Her2, which instructs the cancer cells to grow. Tumors that produce Her2 grow and spread more quickly than do other breast cancers, and patients with so-called Her2-positive tumors tend to die sooner.

Their best treatment option is a drug called Herceptin, which shuts down the Her2 protein. But Herceptin works for only a small fraction of Her2-positive tumors – and even those tumors that do shrink sometimes come back after the cancer cells become resistant to the treatment.

So Whittington, Wei, and their co-workers were delighted to discover that a DNA vaccine saved mice that had breast-cancer cells injected into their sides, regardless of whether the cells were resistant to other therapies.

Wei's vaccine has already undergone one small clinical trial, performed by researchers in Sweden, to test its safety. It had no adverse effects, Wei says. “They are planning another trial as we speak.”

But Whittington has moved on – for now – to patient care in medical school. As she learns about internal medicine, surgery, and other specialties, she now ponders her future options.

“There are an infinite number of paths you can take,” she says. “Strictly clinical? Strictly research? Both? Which field?”

Regardless, she's not likely to lose touch with faculty members that have discussed her research with her, mentored her, or taught her. Good at making scientific allies,

Whittington keeps them abreast of her work, even from afar.

“I want them to know how I'm doing and that I'm working really hard,” she says. “As appreciation for them taking the time to invest in me.”

Inventions Developed in Prof. Michael Summers’ Lab Could Lead to New HIV Drugs, Targets

The Swedish biotech firm Vironova has reached an agreement with UMBC to license patented technology developed in the laboratory of Michael Summers, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator at UMBC, which could lead to new anti-HIV drugs.

Under the terms of the agreement, Vironova is granted exclusive worldwide rights to two patent families owned by UMBC. The patents cover inventions related to substances and targets for so-called capsid assembly inhibitors (CAI). Capsids are the protective protein shells of viruses. CAI drugs keep viruses from becoming infectious by interfering with the precise assembly of about 60 proteins that make up the capsid.

Summers, one of only two HHMI Investigators at Maryland public universities, is a world authority in HIV research. His lab has earned national acclaim for the quality of its research as well as the diversity of its undergraduate and graduate student researchers, many of whom are Meyerhoff Scholars at UMBC.

Summers will stay in close cooperation with Vironova as the projects progress towards clinical development. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

The HIV drug development programme at Vironova is primarily focusing on CAIs. So far, much of the work has evolved around assessing the intellectual property and potential of these CAI substances at the Karolinska Institute, Huddinge (Stockholm), under the supervision of Professor Jan Bergman. These activities will now be extended to include the Summers lab at UMBC.

“By closing this agreement, we are pleased to solidify our collaboration with professor Summers and his team at UMBC. I‘m convinced our joined forces will result in many new drug candidate discoveries," said Mohammed Homman, CEO and founder of Vironova.

"We are excited about moving forward with this international collaboration," said Summers. "Vironova's expertise in drug design and optimization will hopefully lead to the breakthroughs needed to get this new class of HIV-1 capsid assembly inhibitors into the clinic."

About Vironova

Based in Stockholm, Sweden, Vironova is a young fast growing company that develops antiviral drugs targeting HIV, herpes and influenza. The company is also a leading innovator of virus diagnostics software products and virus analysis services based on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images.

Presently, Vironova manages a number of projects to develop new image analysis techniques to detect and identify different viruses affecting humans and animals. The single most significant project concerns viruses regarded to be the most devastating in case of potential epidemic or pandemic outbreaks. Read more about the project on www.panvirushield.com.