In this issue
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Making it count
Nora Kessel: beats cancer and fights back through Relay For Life

Fighting cancer, one integrin at a time
Dr. Cindy Miranti

In memory of her father
Kea Deppe: an all-around ACS volunteer

Fight Back this month at Indiana Lobby Day

What's your New Year's resolution?
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Health Check Quiz
Reduce your cancer risk

Healthy Recipe
Lemon cake with brandied blueberry sauce

GLO Grads
Savanna Rivest
Community Representative
Lakeshore Staff

Fighting cancer, one integrin at a time
As a young girl scout, Dr. Cindy Miranti had always been drawn to the outdoors, animals, and biology. Today, she’s a Scientific Investigator, running a lab at the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

She had watched members of her family struggle with cancer and lose their battle. “In spite of the fact that people were saying that you can survive cancer. It just didn’t seem to me that was the reality of it, at least for our family.”

When Cindy was in college, she majored in Biology where she experienced lab work for the first time, and found her niche. “I started out in virology and viruses and bacteria, and I felt like we had vaccines and antibiotics, but we didn’t really have anything to cure cancer. If you really wanted to understand this disease, you needed to study it. I just kept looking for a way to get into that.”

At Van Andel, Cindy Miranti ’s lab studies the mechanisms through which a cell interacts with its surroundings and receives signals from other parts of the body.

“Basically, in order to kill tumor cells you need to know the mechanisms by which tumor cells survive, and you need to know the mechanisms by which normal cells survive. Then you need to design drugs that are going to kill only the tumor cells and not affect the normal cells,” she said.

A particular focus of the lab is on proteins called “integrins,” which have part of their molecule outside the cell, part within the cell’s outer membrane, and the remainder within the cell. Integrins are involved in the attachment of cells to their surroundings, helping to give shape to tissues and allowing the controlled movement of cells. Cell attachment and movement are misregulated in cancer cells, especially during metastasis when tumor cells move from the primary tumor site to distant tissues.

How integrins receive and process signals that lead to the misregulation of cell attachment and movement is a major question the lab is pursuing, particularly with regard to metastatic prostate cancer and melanoma.

When Cindy’s not in the lab, you can find her kayaking, hiking, or knitting! “I do a lot of arts and crafts. I knit, crochet, and embroider. It’s kind of left over from my childhood. I still do that when I want to relax.”

Want to know more about the Society’s research program and funding? Visit www.cancer.org/research.

Pictured: Dr. Cindy Miranti