Besa Xhabija wins poster prize at the 10th Biannual Great Lakes Glia Meeting

The Vacratsis lab participated in the 10th Biannual Great Lakes Glia Meeting that took place on Sept 27-29th, 2015 in Traverse City, Michigan. Besa Xhabija was awarded the Best Poster Award, which carried a cash prize of $200.  Congratulations Besa!

Dr. Pandey discusses disease-fighting natural compounds on research talk show

Siyaram Pandey was skeptical when he was first approached by a local oncologist who was curious about cancer patients who had been drinking dandelion tea and seemed to be getting better.

“To be honest I was very pessimistic,” said Dr. Pandey, a professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry who researches the effects that a variety of natural compounds have on the process of cell death. “She said it could be coincidental but it couldn’t hurt to see if there is anything.”

Pandey, who will appear today on CJAM to discuss his research, conducted a literature review and could only find one journal article suggesting dandelions may have cancer-killing properties. But he and his team of graduate students collected a bunch of the weeds anyway, ground them up with a mixture of water in a food processor and developed a simple formula they could experiment with.

Click here to read the full story on the Daily News!

Student researchers inspired by legacy of cancer patient

Every morning when they go to work in their Essex Hall biochemistry lab, Ph.D. students Pam Ovadje and Dennis Ma get an inspirational reminder of why they’re there. Mounted on the door to that lab is a plaque dedicating the space to the memory of Kevin Couvillon, who died at the age of 26 in November 2010, after a three-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia.

Last week, Ovadje, Ma and other graduate students from the lab of professor Siyaram Pandey met with Couvillon’s parents to give them an update on their research into how such natural products as dandelion root extract and pancratistatin – derived from a Hawaiian spider lily plant – cause certain cancer cells to effectively commit suicide.

After an emotional presentation in the Toldo Health Education building on what would have been Kevin’s 28th birthday, his father Dave discreetly handed Dr. Pandey a cheque for $20,000 to help fund the research, bringing the total the family has donated to the lab to $40,000. It was gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the students.

Read more of this story here on the Daily News.

Researchers in Chemistry and Biochemistry receive Seeds4Hope funding

Congratulations to Professor James Green, who was awarded a Seeds4Hope grant to develop compounds that have shown early success killing cancer cells.

Excerpt from the Windsor Star article:

“As a chemist, you’re so used to having long hours of work without immediate rewards, that you often think, ‘I better not hope too much,’” Green said Monday after collecting a grant to continue his research for two more years. “But so far, I’m delighted. I really hope it leads to something.”

On Monday, Green’s project was awarded $67,000 over two years by Seeds4Hope, funded by the Windsor & Essex County Cancer Centre Foundation. Also collecting research grants from Seeds4Hope on Monday were University of Windsor professors Andrew Swan, who will use $63,000 over two years to probe tumour-suppressing functions of cancer genes, and Panayiotis Vacratsis, who will use $76,000 over two years to investigate a possible link between a specific tumour growth and survival.

To read more:

http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Protein+killer+holds+promise+cancer+cure/5635023/story.html#ixzz1cVCsZgZj

In addition, Prof. Otis Vacratsis was awarded $76,000 for his proposal: Functional Characterization of hYVH1/DUSP12: A Putative Oncogene Overexpressed in Late Stage Cancers. This research project focuses on investigating a new cell survival enzyme (hYVH1), that has recently been implemented in both cell growth and division, and has been found to be over productive in many aggressive, late stage cancers.

To learn more about our department, visit http://www.uwindsor.ca/chemistry.

Click the professors' names above to visit their websites.

See also: http://www.ourwindsor.ca/2011/11/206k-goes-to-local-cancer-research-projects/

Students take top honours at natural health products conference

The son of parents from Vietnam and grandparents from China, Dennis Ma grew up in house where traditional remedies and natural herbal products were commonplace. So using a derivative from a rare plant to try to find a cure for cancer doesn’t really surprise him all that much.~

“A lot of these natural products have been used as traditional medicines for a long time, but we’re starting to see a lot more of them being used in a scientific setting,” said Ma, a second year master’s student in biochemistry who tests the effectiveness of pancratistatin, a derivative of a Hawaiian spider lily which has proven to kill certain cancer cells without harming healthy ones.

Ma and lab partner Katie Facecchia, both students in the lab of professor Siyaram Pandey, recently returned from Montreal where they attended the Natural Health Products Research Society of Canada’s annual conference. Ma took first place in the student oral presentation category while Facecchia, who studies the effectiveness of a water soluble formula of the naturally occurring Coenzyme Q10 at halting the progression of Parkinson’s disease, placed second.

Another group of Dr. Pandey’s students recently garnered a considerable amount of attention for their work on a formula they developed from dandelion root extract, which also halted the spread of certain types of cancer cells.

Facecchia said attending the conference gave her a renewed sense of optimism that the scientific community is embracing the notion of looking to nature to test solutions for current medical challenges.

“People used these products back in the day for a reason and now we’re rediscovering them with modern science,” she said.

There were five presentations from Pandey’s lab made at the conference and three of them were dedicated to the memory of Kevin Couvillon, who died in 2010 at the age of 26 after a lengthy battle with cancer. His parents donated $20,000 to Pandey’s lab earlier this year. Pandey said Ma, Facecchia and fellow students Pamela Ovadje and Madona Chochkeh made high-impact presentations, which he believes contributed to the society’s decision to hold its 2013 here in Windsor.

“They responded to the panel’s questions very lucidly and defended the work very well,” he said. “We’re very grateful to Seeds 4 Hope, Joseph Sczesei and the Couvillons for generously supporting their research.”