Mohammed Gbadamosi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacotherapy and Translational Research, UF College of Pharmacy; University of Florida Health Cancer Center
Chemotherapy is a standard part of most cancer patients’ treatment. While the ultimate goal of chemotherapy is typically to kill the cancer cell, how chemotherapy kills the cancer cell is also critically important. Emerging research has shown that chemotherapy can kill cancer cells in a way that alarms immune cells surrounding the tumor and activates them to further kill the cancer cells. Leveraging this effect, researchers and clinicians can pair chemotherapy with immunotherapy, another type of cancer therapy that specifically harnesses the immune system to kill cancer. This combined therapeutic approach is especially important for tough subtypes of breast cancer, like the triple-negative subtype, which has limited treatment options beyond chemotherapy and immunotherapy. However, while this therapeutic approach has great promise, there is often variability in response, in part due to differences in how chemotherapy affects the immune system across different patients.
In this talk, we will explore how chemotherapy affects the immune system in triple-negative breast cancer, what some reasons are for poor immune activation by chemotherapy in some patients, and finally some ways we might be able to address that poor immune activation.
Dr. Mohammed Gbadamosi is an assistant professor in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy. His research focuses on optimizing cancer treatment strategies that combine chemotherapy and immunotherapy
Core Standards
SC.912.L.14.6 Explain the significance of genetic factors, environmental factors, and pathogenic agents to health from the perspectives of both individual and public health.
SC.912.L.16.8 Explain the relationship between mutation, cell cycle, and uncontrolled cell growth potentially resulting in cancer.
SC.912.L.16.10 Evaluate the impact of biotechnology on the individual, society and the environment, including medical and ethical issues
SC.912.N.4.2 Weigh the merits of alternative strategies for solving a specific societal problem by comparing a number of different costs and benefits, such as human, economic, and environmental.
SC.912.N.1.6 Describe how scientific inferences are drawn from scientific observations and provide examples from the content being studied.
SC.912.L.14.52 Explain the basic functions of the human immune system, including specific and nonspecific immune response, vaccines, and antibiotics.
