UNM-Valencia student, professor researching molecular profiling for cancer research and treatment

TOME — To look a the small, quiet campus sitting in metaphorical shadow of Tomé Hill, you wouldn’t know there are students and faculty conducting research to move cancer treatment forward and give patients a chance be treated more effectively.

As part of the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus’s undergraduate research program, faculty mentors and student mentees conduct research, which allows students real-world experience and advances vital research projects.

“I think the entire story of this kind of initiative to which this new program belongs to, started about 10 years ago when the University of New Mexico-Valencia got a federal grant that allowed it to buy real scientific infrastructure, equipment to do research, which is typically not to be bound on a two-year campus,” said Dr. Piotr Filipczak, UNM-Valencia assistant professor of chemistry and research mentor.

“Since then we have started to develop — not just me, but rather my more experienced colleagues — have started to develop an undergraduate research program. As part of program, we have (student) mentees who work individually with faculty mentors to conduct some new, novel experimental research.”

The new program Filipczak is referring to is UNM-Valencia’s medical biotechnology certificate program, which began this fall. The program provides students with knowledge of applied molecular biology techniques, with practical training in cutting-edge laboratory procedures desired by biotechnology and laboratory industries.

It also allows students to commit to experimental biomedical research early in their college career. Filipczak noted the Valencia campus is the only college to offer this kind of certificate program in New Mexico.

One student taking advantage of the opportunity to do biomedical research with Filipczak is Rosa Sisneros-Jimenez, who earned her GED through UNM-Valencia’s Next Steps adult education program in 2021 and graduated this past spring with her associate degree in general science.

She is now working on her bachelor of science in medical laboratory sciences.

Sisneros-Jimenez emigrated to the U.S. about 17 years ago from Guadalajara, Mexico. Before the move, she planned to get a biochemistry degree.

“But because of the migration, I could not finish high school,” Sisneros-Jimenez said.

Once here, she began building a life, got married and had a family. As her children grew older, she wanted to pursue her dream of a degree again.

After finishing her GED, Sisneros-Jimenez wasn’t sure what to do and her teachers encouraged to apply to college.

“I was trying to get back to the goals I had when I was younger,” she said. “I always wanted to work in a lab because I was inspired by a friend of my mother’s in Mexico. She had a lab at her home because she was helping with the (local) clinic. It was a really rural town, so she was helping with the diagnosis in the clinic. It was very inspiring.”

Sisneros-Jimenez recalls standing in the hallways reading large posters about the research projects Filipczak and his colleagues were working on at the campus over and over again, calling them her “guilty pleasure, because they were so interesting.”

One day during class, Filipczak mentioned he was looking for new research mentees and that was the beginning of Sisneros-Jimenez’s next journey. Initially only able to commit limited time to the research project, she now finds herself in the campus lab every day.

The first part of the research was to see if she and Filipczak could successfully grow cancer cells — specifically lung cancer cells — on campus with the equipment that was available and they were successful.

“The project was simple — implementing and optimizing a model that can be used for this kind of biomedical research,” Filipczak said.

As a smaller university without the infrastructure of traditional four-year colleges, he said very often it’s a matter of finding alternative protocols to apply to produce data.

“Rosa had a quite exciting stage of a project when she was actually able to introduce an in vitro model for cancer cells grown here at our campus,” Filipczak said.

Once they were able to grow the cells, they began testing three cancer drugs to see how effective they were against the lung cancer cells.

“One specific drug caught my attention and I started becoming really passionate about it,” Sisneros-Jimenez said. “I would read scientific papers just to find out what is going on. After we identified there’s a drug that is really effective with these cancer cells. I was just curious to know how are they dying?

“I found some very interesting results that I was not expecting, but they seem to be very promising for the future.”

What Sisneros-Jimenez most likely found, Filipczak said, is an alternative mechanism of action of one of the experimental drugs.

“The new mechanism is key here,” he said.

The goal of Filipczak and Sisneros-Jiminez’ research is to find the best possible match between a medication and the type of cancer being treated.

“Every single type of cancer is different, kind of like every person is different. When we know exactly what is the mechanism through which medications kill cancer cells, we can match them better to the individual profile of the tumor that the person suffers from,” Filipczak said. “This is called precision medicine. This kind of molecular profiling, which involves the mechanism of toxicity induced by drugs in different subsets of cancer, can hypothetically provide a better match when it comes to which particular form of treatment should be applied to a patient, depending on the characteristics of that patient’s disease.”

The type of research Sisneros-Jimenez and other UNM-Valencia students are able to experience typically isn’t available to students until after they have completed their bachelor’s degrees and begin doctorate level work, Filipczak said.

“I started to do this kind of research when I was 20 years old, a sophomore myself back in Poland,” he said. “If a person is a sophomore in college, that person is not to young or too inexperienced to do this kind of research. That person can be successful with the proper mentorship.”

He added the without the strong support of UNM-Valencia Chancellor Sam Dosumu and Dean of Instruction Laura Musselwhite, the undergraduate research program on campus wouldn’t be possible.

“The research is a wonderful pedagogical tool. Students enrolled even in basic classes in science will learn that science much better, much more effectively if they can participate in research. We want to produce both a scholarly product, new findings, but simultaneously, use these strategies to teach our students more effectively,” he said.

After she completes her bachelor of science, Sisneros-Jimenez wants to apply to graduate school to pursue a PhD in biomedical sciences.

“Having this experience of research, specifically into cancer, has really given me focus,” she said. “When I apply to grad school, it’s going to be within the cancer research area.”