Bárbara Mora’s thesis presented the results of a new potential alternative, based on the mixture of two drugs, which could generate positive effects in treatments for this pathology.

Gastric cancer is the second main cause of death by cancer in the Chilean population and the leading cause of death by cancer in men, what makes it an important problem in public health.

This is what reports from the International Association of Cancer Registries reveal, trying to improve survival rates and to reduce adverse effects. Cisplatin is one of the most used chemotherapy medications, although the main problem of this treatment method is drug resistance.

The identification of new differentially expressed genes associated to the development of cisplatin-resistant phenotypes in gastric cancer cell lines was the main objective of the research and thesis carried out by Bárbara Mora, with which she obtained her doctoral degree in Science with specialization in Applied Cellular and Molecular Biology from the university Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO).

Within the research, Dr. Mora generated a model of resistance to cisplatin in gastric cancer cell lines, to later characterize and perform an RNA-seq analysis to determine the genes and signaling pathways of interest, meaning those involved in the resistance phenotype.

The research was carried out under the supervision of Dr. Priscilla Brebi (guiding teacher) and Dr. Carmen Ili (co-guiding teacher) at the Laboratory of Integrative Biology (LIBi), CEMT-BIOREN, of UFRO.

Bárbara Mora is a biotechnologist who graduated from UFRO and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in 2015. During her Ph.D. studies, she achieved 5 ISI publications, 2 non-ISI publications and submitted 1 paper. In addition, she actively participated in 8 international and 13 national congresses.

“I chose this program, because I wanted to do research in my region. Besides, the program did offer the field of research I wanted to work in and the academic body I wanted to work with. I had to make constant sacrifices for 5 years and I learned to overcome my frustrations, because in science, most of the time the experiments do not work out as you thought. But everything is possible when you have such a great team standing behind you,” Dr. Mora concluded.

Written by: UFRO Communications Office