Pooja Mittal is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. In this Postdoc Portrait, she discusses how her work focuses on finding new and effective treatment strategies for colorectal cancer.
Colorectal Cancer Therapies and Tumor Microenvironment
Q | What drew you to studying colorectal cancer?
Colorectal cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide and thus it is a very important research field. The major target that drew me towards this field was myeloid cell leukemia-1 (MCL-1) which is a protein that helps the cancer cells to avoid cell death.
Q | What scientific problem are you trying to solve?
I am currently working to identify and analyze different biomarkers in colorectal cancer. Another domain of my research includes identifying new treatments against these biomarkers. The biomarkers and associated therapies will subsequently result in better diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of colorectal cancer.
Q | What’s one thing you learned from your research that you didn’t expect?
When I started I was more focused on the role of protein MCL-1 in cancer cells, however, while working on this research project I got a broader perspective of its involvement not only in cancer cells but also the tumor microenvironment, which I had not envisioned earlier.
Q | If your research succeeds, what could it change for science or society?
My research is primarily focused on finding new and effective treatment strategies for colorectal cancer. Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide and its incidence is recently increasing in young patients aged less than 50 years, so finding treatments which can benefit the therapeutic outcome and survival in these patients is very crucial.
Q | What question are you most excited to answer next?
Nuclear genome has been widely studied in cancer, however recently mitochondrial genome or mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is emerging as a potential biomarker in various cancers. My next project would be to see how the modulation in mtDNA can affect colorectal cancer.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
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