Akindele Olagunju of Pawtucket to present research on liver cancer at American Institute for Cancer Research conference

2016 Oct 3

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) recently notified Akindele Olagunju of Pawtucket, a second-year medical student at The Commonwealth Medical College (TCMC), that his research abstract was selected for presentation at AICR's 25th annual research conference. Mr. Olagunju's research, conducted under the principal investigator Darina Lazarova, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular biology at TCMC, and with the guidance of Mark White, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of epidemiology at TCMC, is entitled, "Mutational profile of liver cancer in obesity." The research examined the mutational profile of liver cancers from obese and normal-weight patients. Both groups of patients displayed the same mutations; however, the cancers from obese patients contained fewer "driver mutations," suggesting that obese individuals might be more susceptible to developing liver cancer than normal-weight individuals. The differences in the number of driver gene mutations were statistically significant when obesity was combined with alcoholism, another risk factor for liver cancer. Mr. Olagunju will present the research Nov. 14-16 in North Bethesda, Maryland.