Tuesday the Chemistry of Cancer class donned disposable white lab coats and safety glasses in their visit to Endocyte,  a start-up chemotherapy targeting company in West Lafayette, IN.  The visit was the culmination of seven weeks of learning about DNA mutation, signal transduction, cell cycle, and apoptosis…and where these processes go wrong in cancer cells.  This involved integrating topics from biochemistry, cell biology, organic chemistry, and physiology.

Cancer therapeutic agents generally affect all dividing cells, including hair follicles, and epithelial cells which line the stomach and form your skin, leading to nasty side effects.  Endocyte is trying to target chemotherapy and imaging agents specifically to the cancer cells, leading to greater efficacy and fewer side effects.  We saw how all aspects of the process are integrated, from synthesizing, purifying, and analyzing potential compounds are to testing them in cells and animals for both specificity and effectiveness.

As part of the tour, Jeffrey Scott Nicoson '97 showed us the various analytical and separation instruments in the lab.  At one point, one of the other Endocyte employees asked the students if they had ever submitted a sample for NMR.

Matt Routh ’09 commented, “yeah, I ran some on our 400 MHz this morning.”  Our host was surprised to find out that not only did Wabash have a NMR spectrometer, but also the students regularly get to use it themselves, AND we have a higher powered instrument than they do!

Meanwhile, Nathan Line '10 appreciated the automatic chromatography system.  He’s continuing a research project he started during his summer internship at The Ohio State University, and appreciated its time saving aspects...but understood the budgetary trade-offs.   

The tour went an hour longer than we planned.  We made it back for afternoon classes and labs just in time…but it was worth every minute.   

This trip was made possible by the Know Indiana Grant from the Lilly Foundation.