MCCB student Nate MacGilvary receives NIH fellowship to investigate mechanisms of chemoresistance in BRCA mutant cancers

Nate MacGilvary, a PhD student in the lab of Sharon Cantor, PhD, has received an NIH National Research Service Award predoctoral training fellowship from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to investigate replication gap suppression in distinct models of chemoresistant BRCA mutant cancers.

The study will build upon recent groundbreaking research in the Cantor lab showing that small nicks (or gaps) in one strand of the DNA, rather than complete double-strand breaks as previously thought, are a key vulnerability in hereditary breast and ovarian cancers (HBOCs, most often caused by a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene) that renders them sensitive to chemotherapy. MacGilvary’s research will investigate whether chemoresistance, which poses a major challenge to the treatment of HBOCs, develops because a cancer cell acquires the ability to repair these small gaps—a mechanism called gap suppression.

The results of the study will identify biological pathways that contribute to chemoresistance in HBOC, paving the way for future development of therapeutic strategies that target these pathways as a means of resensitizing chemoresistant HBOCs to therapy.