Portland Magazine
March 1, 2023
Thanks to a $404,000 grant from the NIH, Susan Murray, Associate Professor of Biology, will be leading students on a three-year research project.
Story by Cheston Knapp
IT WAS THE end of a long day and biology professor Susan Murray was giving me a tour of her lab. She pulled her cinnamony hair back, and said, “Let me show you where we keep the white blood cells.”
Murray slipped on a pair of heavy-duty gloves and opened the top of what appeared to be a ceramic keg. Wispy tendrils of smoke emerged.
Thanks to a $404,000 grant from the NIH, the first of its kind for UP and an outstanding personal achievement, Murray will be leading a team of fortunate students on a three-year research project. Together they’ll be exploring how Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT), a common treatment for prostate cancer, affects the immune system, T cells in particular. Androgens are sex hormones—testosterone’s the most common one—responsible for the development of male characteristics in vertebrates. But when testosterone gets inside a prostate cancer cell, it kicks the cell into overdrive, making it spread faster. Suppressing androgens in a person with prostate cancer, then, is a little like depriving fire of air. A tumor doesn’t grow as fast without it and in many cases actually shrinks. That said, scientists don’t know precisely how ADT affects the patient’s immune system. This study aims to help doctors understand how to combine ADT with other powerful immunotherapies to create a one-two punch against prostate cancer.
“The white blood cells are stored in liquid nitrogen until we’re ready for them,” Murray said. She pulled out a long metal rod, at the end of which were blocky containers full of tiny vials. Liquid nitrogen poured off them and evaporated in a foggy mess around us.
As she took me through all the stations of her lab, from the biological safety cabinet to the water baths to the centrifuge to the plate reader to the CO2 incubator, I was awed by how patiently she dealt with a person like me—before the tour I would’ve guessed an androgen was a murderous robot. Her gifts as a teacher were as much on display as her gifts as a scholar.
“This grant will propel our research program to the next level,” she said.
CHESTON KNAPP is Portland magazine’s senior writer and associate editor.
University of Portland
5000 N. Willamette Blvd.,
Portland, Oregon 97203-5798
503.943.8000
This website uses cookies to track information for analytics purposes. You can view the full University of Portland privacy policy for more information.
