Two of our faculty, Lalita Shevde-Samant, Ph.D., and Rajeev Samant, Ph.D., Ph.D., both professors in the Division of Molecular & Cellular Pathology and senior scientists, cancer cell biology with the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, have collaborated on research on hypoxia that was recently publised in Cell iScience.

"Essentially, tumor growth leads to a central cellular mass where cells get less oxygen (hypoxia)," Rajeev Samant explains. "These cells either die or learn to survive by recruiting new blood vessels to feed them. Our study reveals a very novel mechanism of how these tumor cells learn to survive. From a fundamental science perspective, our report is one of the first to introduce the concept that the machinery (ribosomes) that makes proteins in a cell is not the same in every cell. These ribosomes do change in tumors based on factors such as hypoxi,a and become very specific for executing their tasks to help the tumor cells."

The article, titled, "Hypoxia re-programs 2'-O-Me modifications on ribosomal RNA," was published online on December 29, 2020 and in print in the January issue of Cell iScience.

Image from the article in Cell iScience