
Aeshah

Aeshah
Everett High School
Everett, MA
Mentor:
Nashielli Diaz-Gallegos
PRISM
Aeshah has big goals and she let us know when she applied to BSSP. “I want my legacy to be of someone who made a difference.” Which is why she was paired to work in the PRISM Lab over the summer. PRISM is capable of small molecule drug screening on up to 900 different cell lines. Because the immune system plays an important role in cancer, PRISM hopes to provide a macrophage-based co-culture assay in the future. However, due to the cost and time it takes to acquire primary macrophages, PRISM aims to develop a model system that would create an assay without the use of primary macrophages. THP-1s (monocytic leukemia cell line), when differentiated with phorbol myristate acetate behave very similarly to macrophages and become macrophage-like. Over the summer, Aeshah intended to create a THP-1 model system to investigate cancer cell and macrophage interactions more effectively.To understand whether differentiated THP-1s will express similar behavior as primary macrophages, Aeshah grew red fluorescently differentiated THP-1s with green fluorescently labeled HCC1806 (a breast cancer cell line) in 2D and 3D culture settings. She was able to conclude HCC1806 cells are sensitive to macrophage like THP-1’s in both a 2D and 3D culturing condition. By the end of the summer, Aeshah was well on her way to making a difference for cancer patients. “BSSP taught me to never give up because my fellow Broadies shared their own obstacles but they fought for their education and got it. I know I have so much potential!”
September 2023