Cancer research on snake venom wins support

Mary Ann McLane, associate professor in the CHNS Department of Medical Technology, has been awarded a prestigious research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her work with snake venom and cancer.

The three-year, $705,138 grant was approved with an R01 designation, which the NIH uses to characterize work as a "research project" reflecting the researcher's "specific interest and competencies."

McLane, who has received research support over the years from organizations including the American Heart Association and the UD Research Foundation, previously received an NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award. But, she is especially pleased to obtain R01 funding, she says, because that category "is considered the true independent researcher award from the NIH [and] carries with it greater prestige and more money."

McLane's research combines what she calls "two interesting partners--naturally occurring snake venom proteins and cancer cells." Specifically, she works with eristostatin, which belongs to a family of venom proteins called disintegrins, which are able to bind to receptors on the surface of all cells, including cancer cells. In mice that are injected with melanoma (skin cancer) cells and eristostatin, the protein prevents the cancer from metastasizing, or spreading.

"How eristostatin does this, however, is a mystery," McLane says. Her research project seeks to unravel that puzzle.

With the help of undergraduate research assistants, she is using DNA to create mutations in the gene for eristostatin, with the eventual goal of discovering what molecular mechanism causes disintegrin to inhibit metastasis.

"Such discoveries have been the foundation in the past for the development of new drugs which can be tested in humans," McLane says. "We're hoping to be part of the cure for this deadly aspect of cancer, metastasis."