Translational Research Spotlight – Dr. Daret St. Clair

Daret St. Clair, PhD, a professor in the UK Graduate Center for Toxicology, is studying the antioxidant enzyme manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) that is essential for our survival and may suppress tumor growth and also reduce the side effects of cancer treatment in humans. What makes her research most exciting is that MnSOD is produced naturally in our cells, and so a form of this enzyme may ultimately offer a nontoxic alternative to cancer prevention and treatment.

Dr. St Clair's research focus on MnSOD began when she was a graduate student. In 1979, her advisor published a summary of the research results of what is now considered to be a landmark review, which reported lower levels of MnSOD in cancer cells as compared to cells that are normal.

After this paper was published, a series of other findings came from researchers around the world, who discovered that the levels of MnSOD were actually sometimes low, but also sometimes very high, in cells with more advanced stages of cancer. Dr. St. Clair set her course on discovering why some cancer cells have low levels of MnSOD and others have high levels, and the mechanisms at work creating the difference.

Dr. St. Clair's group is now studying the mutation in MnSOD
that causes the low levels of enzyme and is also studying the effects of tumor suppressor proteins that, when mutated in aggressive cancers, cause the activity of MnSOD to rise. Her hope is to eventually find the most direct mechanism to regulate the amount of MnSOD in early stages of tumor growth as well as in the most advanced stages of cancer, and to thereby develop an intervention to naturally fight cancer.

"Our dream is to prevent people from developing cancer and to help those who have already developed cancer by learning how to moderate the MnSOD enzyme, which is found naturally in the body. If we succeed in either of these ways, we will have made a tremendous contribution to alleviating the suffering from cancer."