Congratulations to Jingyi Zhao, Ph.D. (Garcia-Marcos Lab) who was awarded 2022 Dahod International Scholar.
Jingyi, a postdoc in Dr. Mikel Garcia-Marcos’ laboratory, will characterize a small molecule inhibitor of a novel signaling mechanism that promotes breast cancer metastasis. He has identified a promising candidate molecule, named IGGi-11, that disrupts a protein signaling complex specifically present in metastatic cancer cells. He intends to further confirm the specificity of this molecule in preventing cancer cell invasiveness without overt cytotoxic effects in normal cells, and to work towards developing analog compounds with improved properties in preclinical breast cancer models.