Presentation description

There are many things that increase risk for developing breast cancer such as genetic mutations, age, hormones, and obesity. Obesity is categorized as a person with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or over. This does not consider muscle mass or their general health. According to the National Library of Medicine, an estimate of 280,000 people die from obesity-related causes every year and over 684,000 cancers are obesity-related according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Obesity increases the likelihood of developing breast cancer in all its different subtypes. In addition to increasing the rate of metastasis, it also decreases the overall rate of survival and makes patients more resistant to treatments. The Hilgendorf Lab has shown that obese mouse fed high-fat and ketogenic diet have larger tumors. To better understand this link between breast cancer, diet, and obesity, my project is trying to investigate weather breast cancer cells uptake lipid. I hypothesize that breast cancer cells that uptake the more lipid in vitro will create larger breast cancer tumors in vivo when injected into mice. To do this, I will stain mouse breast cancer cells with C16 fatty acid attached to a green marker (bodipy) and take images of the cells over 24 hours to measure C16 fatty acid uptake. To show that these results are also applicable in humans, I am repeating my experiments in human breast cancer cell lines. My project will help researchers understand how lipids effect breast cancer cell growth.