Surf Diaries 2005

Searching for a Kinder, Gentler Cancer Drug

SURF Student Studies Platinum’s Anti-Cancer Potential

Certain platinum compounds are believed to show great promise as drugs in the fight against cancer. This summer Samantha Hopkins, a senior, chemistry major and biology minor at Randolph-Macon, tried once more to determine if a particular class of platinum compounds have anti-cancer potential. Samantha was one of many students participating in the college’s 2005 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program.

A SURF connoisseur, Samantha has been participating in the program since her freshman year at Randolph-Macon. This summer, the Charlotte Hall, Md., native built upon previous SURF research by synthesizing and characterizing platinum-based complexes that are analogues to cisplatin.  Cisplatin is an effective chemo-therapeutic agent, but is very toxic to the body.  Accordingly, Samantha worked to design complexes that have more water soluble characteristics, which in turn would reduce the number of side effects a person experiences when taking the medication.  More specifically, Samantha focused on the biological effects of her complexes by using different methods to see if they would bind to molecules that are similar to DNA. 

“Given my interest in medicine and medical research, this program was perfect for me because it gave me the opportunity to work on developing anti-cancer therapy compounds that structurally and theoretically would be more effective and less toxic to the body,” she said. “This project has taught me patience first and foremost. On top of that, it has taught me a great amount of lab technique that I would not have obtained in a classroom laboratory situation.”

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