Chakroborty awarded $100,000 grant for breast cancer research

By Lindsay Hughes
lahughes@health.southalabama.edu

Debanjan Chakroborty, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pathology at the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama and a cancer researcher at the USA Health Mitchell Cancer Institute, is the recipient of a $100,000 grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama. Presented during an event in Birmingham in December, the award was part of the organization’s $1.125 million investment in state-based research in 2024.

The highly competitive grants provide investigators funding over a two-year period. The awards act as seed funding for early-stage studies, allowing researchers to generate crucial data needed to attract major national grants.

Breast cancer is a complex disease that is often identified with the presence of a hardened mass or tissue resulting from an overabundance of non-cellular components called extracellular matrix (ECM). The ECM imparts a gradual elastic force to the cancer cells, known as matrix stiffness, which alters the cancer cell behavior, promotes metastatic progression, and impacts therapeutic outcomes, Chakroborty explained.

“Manipulation of cancer tissue stiffness is envisioned as a major strategy for improvement in cancer therapeutics,” he said. “However, the strategy is not yet successful due to the lack of appropriate targets.”

Chakroborty’s project will explore a novel axis in breast cancer progression. Specifically, the study will identify the role of lysine-deficient protein kinase 1 (WNK1) on matrix stiffness in breast cancer. WNK1 is a protein that is abundantly expressed in cancer-associated fibroblasts, the most prominent non-cancer cell population in breast cancer tumor microenvironment and the primary depositor of ECM.

The research will be conducted in collaboration with Dhananjay T. Tambe, Ph.D., associate professor of mechanical engineering/biomedical engineering at USA; and Elba A. Turbat-Herrera, M.D., professor of pathology and director of the USA Health Biobank.

Also, during the event, researchers presented posters to share findings from previously funded BCRFA research projects. Among the presenters were Simon Grelet, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; and postdoctoral fellows Prabhat Suman, Ph.D., from Chakroborty’s lab, and Sooraj Kakkat, Ph.D., from the lab of Chandrani Sarkar, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology.

BCRFA is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to find a cure for breast cancer by funding promising breast cancer research in Alabama. BCRFA funds promote a comprehensive approach to battling breast cancer by fueling collaborative and innovative research to help diagnose, treat, prevent, and eradicate the disease.