Damien Samways.

Christopher Lenney

POTSDAM – Clarkson University Associate Professor of Biology Damien Samways has been awarded a $428,924 grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health for his research into how therapeutic drugs target cancer cells.

One major limitation of current cancer therapy is the difficulty in getting chemotherapeutics to effectively and selectively enter and suppress cancer cell growth while minimally impacting the surrounding healthy cells.  

Samways’s research focuses on a large family of cellular transport proteins in the body called channel proteins, which form gated pores on the surface membranes of cells and regulate the movement of solutes into and out of the cells.

“Some of these channel proteins appear to be able to open wide enough to conduct entry of larger drug-sized molecules into cells,” Samways explained. “We recently discovered a channel protein called "KCa3.1" that is upregulated in cultured cancerous cells of the human cervix, which appears to open wide enough to permit the entry of small cytotoxic agents selectively into those cancerous cells, suppressing their growth.”

Samways said that while these are only in vitro studies, they raise the possibility of using the body's own cellular transport mechanisms to manipulate the effectiveness of drugs in a targeted manner.

Funding for this research will also support up to three undergraduate researchers full-time during the summer, Samways said.