Swapnaa Balaji, a doctoral candidate in the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, made promising discoveries in prostate cancer treatment by applying her early interest in medicinal chemistry to original research she conducted in faculty laboratories at UToledo.
When Balaji was just 12 years old, her mother died from a deadly cardiovascular disease, a tragic event that shaped her as a woman and as a scientific researcher.
Swapnaa Balaji, a doctoral candidate in the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, at the Brooklyn Bridge.
“It is my mom who sowed this dream in me to pursue scientific research,” Balaji said. “I had never once questioned what I was going to do for a career afterwards.”
Balaji began her college career in Chennai, India, where she earned a bachelor of pharmacy degree from Vels University. Thinking about her future, she began researching universities where she could earn her graduate degree, ultimately deciding on UToledo’s Medicinal and Biological Chemistry program.
“I knew if I wanted to pursue scientific research seriously, I must be in the U.S.,” she said. “The U.S. is the country with the most abundant resources, infrastructure, talent and opportunities for science.”
Upon acceptance into the program, Balaji began scientific research for her master’s thesis in the laboratory of Dr. Marcia F. McInerney, a Distinguished University Professor in the department of Medicinal and Biological Chemistry.
Balaji was introduced to high-tech analytical chemistry tools new to the lab, such as the liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) instrument. She used these tools to develop a heightened understanding of the metabolomic changes in type 1 diabetes and how they can be useful as biomarkers for early disease prediction. This research guided her to the successful completion of her master of science degree program.
In fall 2019, Balaji began her Ph.D. journey in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.
She started researching and developing novel quinoline derivatives for the treatment of prostate cancer alongside Dr. Amit K. Tiwar, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Balaji paired her new and prior knowledge in medicinal chemistry to test a quinoline molecule received from a collaborator in India called IND-2, a compound that showed promise against prostate cancer. The chemical structure of quinolines has been studied for many years and used as a foundation for the development of novel anti-cancer drugs.
Balaji began testing the IND-2 compound, which effectively killed the cancerous cells without causing side effects or killing non-cancerous cells. That’s when Balaji developed and tested her hypothesis, “Is the enzyme topoisomerase II IND-2’s target?” The drug was only inhibiting the enzyme 50% of the time, and after frustration and repetitive results, Balaji made a breakthrough discovery in her field.
In 2022, she conducted an experiment, hypothesizing that IND-2 may only be partially inhibiting the enzyme and could be simultaneously inhibiting the function of other cancer-causing proteins associated with it. To her surprise, the experiment was highly successful and proved her hypothesis to be true.
Swapnaa Balaji will graduate in December.
“To our knowledge, this is the first molecule that is shown to inhibit four different cancer-causing proteins simultaneously,” she said. “We now have a multitargeted inhibitor, a concept that is just beginning to gain popularity in the field.”
Considering the complexity of cancer drug research, Balaji said this finding has the potential to provide a monumental building block for future discoveries in drug research, such as the way IND-2 functions, the effectiveness of the molecule and its contribution to prostate cancer treatment.
“This novel discovery opens an entirely new avenue in drug discovery research where we believe scientists can build upon the structure of IND-2 and make more potent multi-targeted inhibitors for cancer therapy,” Balaji said.
To help fund her scientific research, Balaji applied for and received the Graduate Student Research Award and the Graduate Women in Science National Fellowship, a prestigious award that promotes knowledge in the natural and social sciences and encourages women’s academic and professional careers in the sciences, earlier this year.
As Balaji prepares to defend her dissertation and graduate in December, she said that she is looking for career opportunities to apply her UToledo training in the life science industry at a company focused on creating cutting-edge technologies and products for scientists around the world.
“I am forever grateful to UT for helping me find my voice again as an international student of color and a woman in STEM,” she said. “This is not my success alone. This is our success.”
