SUMMER AT SINAI

Editor’s Note: The following submission by Alex Kunzle (’16) is a paragraph summary of the work she will be doing this summer for Science Research at Mt. Sinai.  

            This summer, I will be working with Dr. Zou at Mount Sinai Hospital. We will be doing research on quiescent glioma stem cells (GSCs) in glioblastoma multiform (GBM). [The hypothesis is that quiescent stem cells have a higher likelihood to form tumors and will be more likely to be unaffected by radiation treatment. To test this, we will be grafting human tumors into mice brains. However, the cells in these tumors will be tagged with a fluorescent so that as they divide, we can use imaging histological analysis to track the cells. As they divide, each cell will have less and less fluorescent. Therefore, the slow-dividing cells will have the fluorescent activated and will glow much more strongly, whereas the fluorescent tag in the fast-dividing cells will become diluted much faster and won’t be visible. Once these cells have been identified, they will be analyzed in a culture for how proliferative history affects future proliferation and tumor size. Additionally, we will be looking at gene expression profiles to identify signaling pathways and a cell differentiation hierarchy. The last thing we will be testing is how cells respond to radiation. Mice will be treated with radiation and the affects on aggregation of tumor cells in the brain and cell markers will be tracked. The cells that resist radiation will be removed to assess gene expression profiles, tumorigenicity and other stem cell-like features.