CSUN Cancer Center Gets Research Grant

A portion of a $200,000 grant has been presented to the Center for Cancer and Developmental Biology at Cal State Northridge.

Center director Steven Oppenheimer said $30,000, the latest of eight installments from the Joseph Drown Foundation, was approved last week. The center and foundation have an agreement that money will continue to be donated as long as the research is deemed productive.

The money is designated to fund cell adhesion research, an important area in the fight against cancer.

Healthy cells stick to each other, while cancerous cells tend to drift throughout the body, exposing many parts of the body to the disease, Oppenheimer said.

“If the wrong cells stick to the wrong cells, you have totally messed up embryos,” he said. “An understanding of the concept of adhesion is crucial to being able to stop birth defects as well as cancer.”

Research funded by the grant, which began last spring, has been performed by undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. Oppenheimer said such a blend is rare. Usually, only post-doctoral fellows or graduate fellows are entrusted with such tasks.

“We are one of the only schools around that gives undergraduates such an opportunity,” Oppenheimer said.

Thus far, the research has shown that adhesion is affected by the presence of certain types of sugars or phosphates on cell surfaces, or by the length of the cell, Oppenheimer said.