Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Many chemotherapies and cancer treatment strategies aim to introduce DNA damage, ideally within the cancer cells and not normal, healthy cells. There are many pathways that cells can leverage to overcome this kind of damage, one of which is known as translesion synthesis. This pathway allows DNA replication to continue through the bulky lesions introduced by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Therefore, it could be a viable strategy to target this pathway in cancer cells that are particularly reliant on it for the characteristic rapid growth seen most cancers. My project aims to uncover which particular cancer types and backgrounds may be the most susceptible to targeting of this DNA repair pathway as a treatment option.