ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – An $800,000 federal grant awarded to a Winthrop University biology faculty member will allow him to study how a particular protein is involved in driving aggressive brain cancers.
The four-year grant signals a first for Daniel Stovall, an associate professor of biology.
As Takita Sumter, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said, Stovall is the first faculty member at Winthrop to receive the Support for Research Excellence First Independent Research (SuRE-First) Award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “As someone who’s witnessed the evolution of Winthrop’s biomedical research initiative, I am beyond thrilled to share this news,” said Sumter, who is a chemistry professor. “Winthrop has maintained its commitment to student-centered research since 2006.”
Stovall and his students will use the grant to study how a gene, RYBP, is altered in the cells of the most common and lethal central nervous system tumor called glioblastoma. It is an aggressive cancer with median survival of under 15 months, so understanding how the disease progresses can reveal new pathways to serve as therapeutic targets, Stovall said.
The grant project is entitled “Determining the Mechanisms of RING1- and YY1-binding protein (RYBP) function and dysregulation in glioblastoma cells.” Money from the grant will go toward supporting the salaries of students who are involved in the research, the purchase of reagents and supplies needed to do the experiments, and student travel to conferences to present findings.
The project is trying to understand two fundamental questions: first, how do these cancer cells turn off a really important gene that controls how DNA is read? And second, said Stovall, if we can reactivate the gene, how does it work to slow down cancer cell growth?
“We will use many different techniques to answer these questions,” he said. “For example, we can force cancer cells to express the protein this gene encodes, and then measure differences in how the cells grow and move, and in what genes they express.”
Several undergraduate and master’s degree students in the Department of Biology have already worked on this project and generated preliminary data that was used to secure the grant. Collaborating with Stovall and his student research team is Yuh-Hwa Wang, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Virginia. Her lab will help analyze what specific gene targets RYBP regulates, providing valuable insight into RYBP’s mechanism.
Stovall said students will be involved in every step of the research process. “They’ll be reading scientific literature to build their background knowledge, designing experiments to test hypotheses, collecting and analyzing data, and presenting and writing up the results,” he said. “I am thrilled that this grant will expand and deepen the research opportunities for my students. I am so proud of the hard work they’ve done and that they will continue to do.”
The Winthrop students also will have the opportunity to spend a summer in Wang’s laboratory at the University of Virginia, where they will be exposed to advanced technologies and resources.
The preliminary data in the proposal was funded through various sources at Winthrop, the SC-INBRE program, and especially the SC INBRE Developmental Research Project (DRP) grant, which has funded Stovall’s lab for three years. Sumter said the initial investments in science infrastructure that started more than a decade ago at Winthrop are still offering substantive returns toward the university’s new strategic plan.
This grant research is supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R16NS141721. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
For more information, contact Stovall at stovalld@winthrop.edu.
