From left, Princeton scientists Hilary Coller and Joshua Rabinowitz, in collaboration with Eileen White of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Rutgers University, are using a variety of scientific techniques to explore how some cancer cells self-cannibalize and go dormant to tolerate extreme stress. Funded by a $1 million National Institutes of Health Challenge Grant through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the project may lead to new treatment regimes that inhibit this ability and kill cancer cells while allowing normal cells to survive.

photo: Princeton University, Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite

Coller and graduate student Erin Haley are exploring the functional consequences of self-cannibalization, or autophagy, in fibroblast cells. In one experiment, they are testing whether cells that are unable to engage in autophagy are defective in their wound-healing abilities.

photo: Princeton University, Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite

To determine whether specific genes play a role in autophagy in proliferating and quiescent cells, Coller's team reduces the activity of these genes and then determines the amount of autophagy within the cell. To assess autophagy levels in one previous experiment, Sarah Pfau, who earned her bachelor's degree from Princeton in 2008, exposed the cells to a fluorescently labeled antibody that recognizes a protein present on autophagosomes, the structures that cells form to perform autophagy. Areas within the cell where autophagy was taking place glowed green when observed under a fluorescent microscope.

image: Princeton University, Sarah Pfau