Six years ago, the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine received a $2.5 million award from the National Institutes of Health to provide salary and research funding for junior faculty who wish to launch a research career in some aspect of women’s health.
This past year, Lynne Elmore, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and the newest recipient of this support, far exceeded program expectations and raised the bar for young investigators in women’s health with her work on the critical roles of telomeres and telomerase in breast cancer.
A telomere is a region of highly repetitive DNA at the end of a chromosome. If telomeres become too short or dysfunctional, they will uncap. A cell then detects this as DNA damage and typically undergoes a prolonged growth-arrested state called cellular senescence.
One of the main research goals for Elmore and co-investigator Shawn Holt, Ph.D., associate professor with joint appointments in the departments of Pathology, Human Genetics, and Pharmacology and Toxicology, is to understand the regulation of telomerase and the role telomeres play in sensing and responding to DNA damage.
Data generated by the Elmore and Holt laboratory will elucidate the relationships between the telomere status, genomic stability and cellular fate of human mammary epithelial cells, likely leading to the development of new preventative and therapeutic strategies for breast cancer.
Elmore is one of nine VCU faculty members supported by Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health, known as BIRCWH scholars.
