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“My ultimate goal is to develop a breast cancer vaccine,” says Samudra Dissanayake, biological sciences Ph.D student.

“A lot of the time, people die not of primary tumors, but because their cancer has metastasized,” continues Dissanayake. This means that the cancer has had enough time to spread into other parts of the body other than the place that it originated. When this occurs, little can be done to stop the disease. Preventive treatment must come earlier in the process. A vaccine would be very effective and have minimal side effects when compared with traditional treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy.

Fighting diseases such as cancer involves the activation of two basic types of T cells, a type of white blood cell in our immune system. CD8+ T cells are the killer T cells that get rid of the tumor, while CD4+ T cells play a key role in providing help to CD8+ T cells in accomplishing this goal. Once the presence of a tumor antigen (certain substances secreted by tumor cells) is recognized by the helper T cell, it can activate CD8+ T cells to get rid of the tumor.

The basic problem with a tumor, however, is that it lacks the necessary molecules to present endogenous tumor antigens to the T cells. Killer T cells cannot be activated, therefore, because the presence of the antigens remains unknown to them. By genetically modifying the tumor cell to express the vital molecules necessary for antigen presentation, it has now become possible to enable tumors to present antigens for recognition by T cells. This is the basis of the vaccine.

Dissanayake’s research has centered on the generation of human tumor cells that are capable of presenting tumor antigens to T cells. While the initial vaccine was developed through research on mice, Dissanayake has helped with transferring this vaccine to humans. Currently, the vaccine is being tested in a laboratory, but, as Dissanayake states, the ultimate goal is to send it to clinical trials.”

Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, biological sciences professor and Robert and Janet Meyerhoff chair, is Dissanayake’s mentor. “Having interviewed all the [biological science] people, I chose Sue as an advisor because I really enjoyed the research and I liked her as a person. She is a wonderful collaborator. She guides us, but also gives us our independence and allows us to think about our work.” Rosenberg also assisted in getting funding for the project, which comes primarily from NIH and the National Cancer Institute.

“The main thing is to love what you do and be a dedicated scientist,” Dissanayake asserts. “You’ve got to work long hours, which means, you can’t progress if you don’t like what you’re doing.”

Samudra Dissanayake received first place in Cancer Research at the 2003 UMBC/UMB Graduate Research Conference.