Laurie Kostecka, a fourth year PhD student in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center, is interested in poly-aneuploid cancer cells (PACCs). With her mentor, Ken Pienta, professor of urology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, director of research at The James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute, and a co-primary investigator at the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center, they are interested in unveiling PACC metabolism as well as trying to find targets to kill them. Kostecka’s research has revealed a higher lipid droplet count in PACCs as compared to normal cancer cells.

Kostecka has been awarded the Nanotechnology for Cancer Research T32 Fellowship, the Donald S. Coffey Prostate Poster Award, and has had abstracts accepted to the Advances in Prostate Cancer Research meeting at the Annual AACR meeting.

Video by Amy Weldon