Dr. Sofia Origanti, assistant professor of biological sciences, recently obtained the $20,000 Markos Family Breast Cancer Research Faculty Scholar Award from the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation (WWHF). WWHF priorities are to focus on diseases affecting the health and mortality of Wisconsin women, and to encourage Wisconsin women researchers to develop as leaders in breast cancer research. This funding will support Origanti’s study to understand how certain factors are deregulated and determine if they can be targeted for new and parallel therapeutic strategies for cancer.
Origanti’s lab recently uncovered a new mechanism of regulation of the eukaryotic initiation factor-6 in response to starvation-induced stress. She received a research grant of $457,000 from the NIH through the NIGMS-R15 funding mechanism for this project.
Former undergraduate students Courtney Jungers and Jonah Elliff helped to generate some of the data for these grants. Scientist Dr. Daniela Masson-Meyers is also involved in the project.
Origanti would like to acknowledge the Biology Department, College of Arts and Sciences, ORSP and Office of Research and Innovation for internal funding, and for their continued support. She believes that this work will expand the understanding of the interplay of translation, ribosomal subunit association, and their contributions to stressed states of starvation and diseases such as cancer.