UNO student Brittany Conroy was recently honored with a first place award for her work on Physiology and Immunology.
Brittan Conroy received the award at a National Student Research Conference for her work on the role of a gene called Caveolin-1 when looking at blood-born cancers such as leukemia.
She says she and fellow student Matthew Latner created a computational model to determine how CAV1 helps to regulate the immune response in white blood cells.
Conroy explains how she first became interested in the project
"I took a Microbiology class and after speaking with my professor about her research and the previous work she’s done with CAV1 and some of her ideas about future projects and goals, I became interested in the subject and immediately asked if I could join her lab and I interviewed and she let me in.”
Based on the team’s research, an overabundance of CAV1 in white blood cells may be an early indication of the existence of cancerous cells.