Ana Carr\u2019s passion is helping people with cancer. She lost her grandfather to the disease, volunteered at a pediatric oncology hospital in her native Brazil as a teenager, and is currently working to find a cure for a condition that kills 8.8 million people worldwide each year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know somebody, or have a family member that went through some form of treatment, or passed away due to cancer,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really a horrible disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday, Carr will graduate with her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the UCF College of Medicine. She has juggled graduate studies as a single mother raising two small children who call her \u201cDoctor Mommy.\u201d Her research focus: finding ways to stop metastatic cancer \u2013 cells that spread from their original tumor and invade other parts of the body like the lungs, bones and brain. She will be hooded at graduation by her teacher and mentor, Dr. Annette Khaled, head of the UCF College of Medicine\u2019s Cancer Research Division.<\/p>\n
Khaled\u2019s lab discovered the peptide CT20 in 2012, which kills metastatic cells by disrupting the folding mechanism inside cancer cells, mediated by a molecular structure called a chaperonin. If the inner workings of the cell can\u2019t fold into three-dimensional units, the cell dies. That discovery helped Dr. Khaled\u2019s lab earn almost $900,000 in grant funding from the national Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).\u00a0 Proceeds from today\u2019s AutoNation Cure Bowl support the foundation. For her doctoral dissertation, Carr discovered that the peptide also appears to stop metastatic small-cell lung cancer. Based on her graduate work, Carr earned a UCF Preeminent Postdoctoral Program (P3) fellowship and will continue her career in Khaled\u2019s lab.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s driven, methodical and positive,\u201d Carr said of Khaled. \u201cI feel privileged to have been mentored by someone as successful as she is. In her lab, I accomplished in two years what usually takes people five years to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carr is hopeful the peptide therapy will work for metastatic small-cell lung cancer because it is so aggressive in spreading. The median survival rate for patients after diagnosis is only two to four months, and only 5 to 10 percent of patients survive for five years. \u00a0According to the National Institutes of Health, smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke, radiation and materials like asbestos are particularly at risk of developing the disease.<\/p>\n
Carr says current treatments for small-cell lung cancer \u201care limited and inefficient. Patients initially respond to it, but often develop resistance, leading to recurrence. There haven\u2019t been any new drug developments for this type of cancer in over 30 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khaled\u2019s lab has studied the peptide for breast cancer in animal models, with the next step being clinical trials. Carr and her mentor will now do the same testing for small-cell lung cancer. \u201cAna is smart, dedicated and is passionate about cancer research,\u201d Khaled said. \u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s the recipe for success and I\u2019m thrilled that Ana\u2019s next career stage as a post-doctoral scientist will be in my lab.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Carr prepared for graduation, she reflected on the late hours in the lab, the defense of her dissertation and how her children \u2013 an 11-year-old girl and 8-year-old boy \u2013 provided support and inspiration along the way.\u00a0Her daughter says she wants to be a scientist when she grows up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were so wonderful these past six months, when I had to finish the paper that\u2019s just been published, and finish my dissertation and defend it. I wouldn\u2019t have done this without them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey call me \u2018Doctor Mommy.\u2019 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve processed yet that I\u2019m actually graduating. \u00a0It\u2019s just the feeling of, I did it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ana Carr\u2019s passion is helping people with cancer. She lost her grandfather to the disease, volunteered at a pediatric oncology hospital in her native Brazil as a teenager, and is currently working to find a cure for a condition that kills 8.8 million people worldwide each year. \u201cWe all know somebody, or have a family member that went through some…","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":80135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,12,17,23],"tags":[14946,979,1004,14916],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-80131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-health","category-medicine","category-research","tag-annette-khaled","tag-college-of-medicine","tag-commencement","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"\n