Fargo, N.D. – Kruttika Bhat, a doctoral student in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and cellular and molecular biology program at NDSU, submitted an abstract titled “DHA Sensitizes Etoposide to Induce Apoptosis in Brain Tumor Cells” to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. It was selected as a poster that was presented at the association’s annual meeting in San Antonio, July 10-13.

The abstract received high scores from three reviewers of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. Two gave full scores to the abstract and one gave an excellent score. All of the reviewers commented that the abstract is an important and interesting study, according to Erxi Wu, Bhat’s doctoral thesis mentor in the pharmaceutical sciences department. “Recently, Kruttika Bhat and Fengfei Wang, research associate in the lab, have demonstrated that docosahexaenoic acid modulates the cytotoxic effect of etoposide (VP16) in medulloblastoma cells. We also have illustrated that the combination of DHA with VP16 in medulloblastoma cells altered multiple signaling pathways. Among them, DNA repair and growth factors/PI3K/MAPK pathways are likely the major contributors to the cytotoxic effects,” Wu said. The work recently has been published in Current Molecular Medicine.