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Left: Marwa M. Abu-Serie, near her lab at CNIO. Credit: Pilar Gil Villar /CNIO.
Right: Ngozi Justina Nwodo in CNIO’s gardens. Credit: Laura M. Lombardía / CNIO.
Marwa M. Abu-Serie Ali creates nanoparticles based on a compound that fights cancer stem cells. She will spend the next six months at the CNIO, where she will observe its effect on the enzyme telomerase
Nigerian biochemist Ngozi Justina Nwodo has spent six months at the CNIO, studying compounds from a legume used against cancer by traditional medicine in her country
Egyptian researcher Marwa Muhammad Abu-Serie Ali, from the Research Institute for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at the Scientific Research and Technological Applications City (SRTA-City) in Alexandria (Egypt), has just joined the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) to study the anti-cancer efficacy of a new nanodrug.
Abu-Serie Ali is participating at the Science by Women – “Ellas investigan” program of the Women for Africa Foundation, which aims to promote research by African women scientists in biomedicine, food security, climate change and other key areas for major global challenges. She will join CNIO’s Telomeres and Telomerase Group Humanism and Science Foundation, directed by Maria A. Blasco.
A compound against alcoholism
The nanodrug she is researching influences metastasis and resistance to chemotherapy. It is based on one of the components of the drug disulfiram, approved to treat alcoholism. Marwa M. Abu-Serie Ali creates nanoparticles aimed at suppressing cancer stem cells, something she has already achieved in animal models.
“To create the nanodrug, I combine the disulfiram component with copper or iron oxide,” she explains. “These metals can trigger new cell death pathways. I also want to test the effect of the nanodrugs on the telomerase enzyme and the telomeres in cancer stem cells.”
This researcher, who will remain at the CNIO for six months, joins CNIO at the end of the stay of her Nigerian colleague Ngozi Justina Nwodo, head of the Department of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Nigeria (Nsukka, Nigeria).
“I am looking for anti-cancer compounds in Nigerian medicinal plants.”
From last May until now, Nwodo has been working in the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the CNIO Experimental Therapeutics Program, investigating compounds from a legume with alleged prophylactic properties. In his research group in Nigeria, Nwodo studies plants used in traditional medicine against, for instance, sleeping sickness, diabetes or cancer.
Her goal is to “isolate the agents that could confer [these plants] the properties attributed to them and optimize them for use,” explains Nwodo. At the CNIO, she has been trying to synthesize them, and will now continue to work on this in collaboration with the CNIO from her country.
About her stay at the CNIO, she highlights the opportunity to learn how to work with instruments that were new to her, a piece of knowledge she will now be able to share with her group. She adds that the experience acquired will also enrich her teaching activity: “I will be able to better teach contents I only knew theoretically so far and have got to practice here”.
More female role models
As for her status as department head, she believes that her experience in Madrid “will contribute to improving my leadership and the productivity of my group, in part because of the knowledge I have got about grant application processes.”
Nwodo decided to apply for the Science by Women – “Ellas investigan” program on the recommendation of her mentor, Francisca Nneka Okeke, professor of physics at the University of Nigeria and member of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences. Now she will herself support and encourage other African women researchers.