Alison Taylor, PhD

Fortunately, my laboratory has been open and running for the entirety of the first year of this ALA award, though we have been delayed by reagent shortages and backorders. In the past year, we completed two subaims of our original proposal, including successfully generating organoids from immortalized lung epithelial cells. In addition, I presented this work at two national and international conferences – the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (New Orleans, April 2022) and the EMBO workshop on Chromosome segregation and aneuploidy (Vienna Austria, May 2022). As we continue with this research program, we will present this work at additional conferences. In addition, we aim to submit for publication by the end of year 2.

Update: The goal of our research program is to understand the role of incorrect chromosome number, called aneuploidy, in the formation of lung squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Therapeutic options for patients with lung SCC are limited, and the average 5-year survival rate is 25%. From the past year, our initial studies suggest that induction of specific lung SCC aneuploidy events prevents proper formation of the “pseudostratified” epithelial layer present in healthy lung bronchi. In the next year, we will uncover exactly how aneuploidy prevents proper formation of this lung epithelium. These studies are among the first to demonstrate how aneuploidy contributes to tumor formation in lung SCC.