Kerri Durkan '22, graduate student, received the Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies' Domer Graduate Student Research Award for her research on “Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Infection Modulates Invadopodia Development in Src-transformed Fibroblasts.”
“Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV), a livestock pathogen that selectively infects and kills human cancer cells, is currently being explored as a therapeutic in a variety of clinical trials for advanced stage cancer patients. My research hopes to identify and elucidate the effects of VSV on the destructive behaviors demonstrated by aggressive cancers,” explained Durkan. “My preliminary results suggest that VSV may decrease the degradative capacity of cancerous fibroblasts by ~50%. I am currently investigating if this decrease in degradative capacity corresponds to a decrease in cancer cell invasion.
Durkan's research was advised by Dr. Darren Seals.
