Student Work
Uncovering Natural Suppressors of Cancer Stem Cells Open Access Deposited
Date Modified: 10/01/2026
This poster was presented by Dalya Aljanabi at the Undergraduate Scholarly Showcase, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio on April 24, 2026. The abstract is located below.
Abstract
Cancer recurrence remains a major challenge in oncology due to the persistence of cancer stem cells (CSCs). CSC presents a small but highly aggressive subpopulation of tumor cells characterized by their self-renewal ability, resistance to therapy, and their ability to initiate new tumor growth. Because of these properties, CSCs are one of the main targets for the development of more effective treatment and efficient management of cancer. Recent studies by others suggest that certain antibiotics can selectively inhibit CSC activity. Through our collaboration with the Tiny Earth antibiotic discovery network, antibiotic containing media supernatants produced by soil bacteria were obtained. We screened these supernatants for their ability to destroy lung CSCs using lung CSC-derived tumorspheres. A tumorsphere is a spherical formation generated from the proliferation of one cancer stem cell. During our recent studies, CSC activity was evaluated using tumorsphere assays using (A549) lung cancer cells. Pre-formed A549 lung CSC tumorspheres were treated with antibiotic containing bacterial media supernatants for five days. A549 lung CSC tumorsphere viability was tested using a 3D-Glo luminescence assay. We found that supernatant 19 demonstrated strong suppression of A549 lung CSC tumorsphere viability while additional supernatants showed moderate inhibitory activity. These findings indicate that soil-derived antibiotics can effectively target lung CSC populations. This research supports continued investigation into bacterial derived compounds as potential CSC targeted treatment and establishes a comparative CSC screening framework. This CSC screening framework lays out the foundation for identifying microbial derived compounds capable of targeting CSCs across multiple non-small cell lung cancer models including NCI H460 derived CSC tumorspheres which represents a more aggressive lung carcinoma.
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- Identifying Natural Inhibitors of Cancer Stem Cells
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- Shirokawa, Jill
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The research project presented in this poster is part of a student-centered collaborative project in the Department of Science & Health at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Identifier: doi:10.7945/7h0w-9e18
Link: https://doi.org/10.7945/7h0w-9e18
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Permanent link to this page: https://scholar.uc.edu/show/1j92g903f