Katia Klenchina with Saswati Bhattacharya and Dr Arthur S. Polans

UW-Madison Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences

This research explores the need for a non-toxic, effective chemotherapeutic to prevent metastasis, in cancer, predominantly melanoma patients. Despite many years of intensive laboratory and clinical research, the sole effective cure is surgical resection. The drug that is being studied is resveratrol, which is believed to induce apoptosis of the cells. It is being studied as it is affects ATF-3, a transcription factor which binds to specific parts of DNA using DNA binding domains, and is part of the system that controls the transfer (or transcription) of genetic information from DNA to RNA. We find resveratrol causes apoptosis, and stops proliferation of cells, and we hypothesize that ATF-3 is such a transcription factor that in the presence of Resveratrol is believed to have a significant effect on cell death and growth.

Experiments were conducted on 96 well plates using mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFS), both with and without ATF-3. The first experiment tested the viability of the wild type and mutant MEFS with treatments of  different concentrations of resveratrol and DMSO as control over a week. The results of this series of experiments shows that the mutant is affected more by resveratrol that the wildtype is. The next set of experiments tested the adhesion of the MEFS and how that was affected by resveratrol treatment. Unfortunately no conclusive data could be gathered from this experiment, but further development is being done to correct its procedure in order to collect more data. Overall, results suggest that the mutant is more susceptible to resveratrol treatment. The wildtype still shows effect when treated with resveratrol which proves that there may be future development of resveratrol as an effective chemotheraputic agent.