A recent College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences graduate wants to improve the chances of survival for cancer patients by stopping the spread of tumors throughout the body.
Michael Donkor, PhD, created a vaccine that stops the spread of breast cancer to the lungs. The project, which he conducted for his dissertation research, was successful in mouse models and could be expanded to test the vaccine in other pre-clinical settings.
“What we wanted to do differently was to tackle metastasis and not the primary tumor itself,” Donkor said. “We identified the lung as one of the most frequent sites of cancer metastasis and engineered a vaccine based on nanotechnology to induce an immune response against the tumor. The goal was to prevent tumor cells from other parts of the body from seeding in the lungs.”
Though Fort Worth is a long way from Ghana, he found a welcoming community that included several international students from his home country. They also came to the HSC College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences for research opportunities they didn’t have back home.
“The students from Ghana kept me confident,” Donkor said. “We are like a family. We get together and celebrate when someone achieves something, and we rely on each other for help.”
That encouragement from his friends and fellow students combined with the support of the College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences faculty were keys to success for Donkor.
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