Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

D Y S O N Y E A R I N R E V I E W 2 0 2 3 – 2 0 2 4 10 F or 30 years, Professor of Biology Nancy Krucher, PhD, has been involved in cancer research—a passion that began when she was an undergraduate student immersed in a lab environment for the first time. Now her mission is to provide that same experience for her undergraduate students on the Pleasantville campus. "Honestly, it's the best pa of my job," said Krucher, who's been working with students in the state-of-the- a lab since she joined Pace 25 years ago. "I was an undergraduate and worked in a lab, and that changed my life and I decided to become a scientist. It's impo ant for me to bring the students in and get them excited about science and research." In 2022, Krucher received a three-year, $400,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study alternative methods to combat cancer cells' development of resistance to targeted treatments, focusing specifically on breast cancer and melanoma cells. "Many treatments in cancer will work on a patient for a few years and then the treatment stops working—that's called resistance," said Krucher. "So I developed an idea of how we could reverse that resistance. My team has been working on melanoma and this drug that we think is going to be very interesting as a possible melanoma treatment." In 2024, biology students Michael Ferre i '24 and Anastasiia Vaska '24 joined Krucher in her pursuit, working with 3D models of melanoma cells—because they're more physiologically accurate as to how tumors behave in a live patient—and studying the cells' reaction to the drug. Within the cells, the group is studying the expression of various proteins that can contribute to cancer growth. They're working to determine the correlation between the expression of the proteins and programmed cell death (the death of a cell due to processes Tackling Cancer Treatment Resistance Professor Krucher Receives NIH Grant to Study Methods to Combat Cancer Cells' Development of Resistance to Treatments Anastasiia Vaska '24 Michael Ferre i '24

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