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Community-engaged basic science in an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center: antioxidants and chemotherapeutic efficacy

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Abstract

Purpose

While community engagement has been a longstanding aspect of cancer-relevant research in social and behavioral sciences, it is far less common in basic/translational/clinical research. With the National Cancer Institute’s incorporation of Community Outreach and Engagement into the Cancer Center Support Grant guidelines, successful models are desirable. We report on a pilot study supported by the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMGCCC), that used a community-engaged, data-driven process to inform a pre-clinical study of the impact of antioxidants on the efficacy of platinum-based chemotherapeutics.

Methods

We conducted a survey of UMGCCC catchment area residents (n = 120) to identify commonly used antioxidants. We then evaluated the effect of individually combining commonly used antioxidants from the survey (vitamin C, green tea, and melatonin) with platinum agents in models of non-small cell lung cancer (A549), colon adenocarcinoma (SW620) and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (FaDu).

Results

In vitro, the anti-neoplastic activity of each chemotherapy was not potentiated by any of the antioxidants. Instead, when combined at fixed ratios, most antioxidant-chemotherapy combinations were antagonistic. In vivo, addition of antioxidants did not improve chemotherapeutic efficacy and in a FaDu-tumor bearing model, cisplatin-mediated tumor growth inhibition was significantly impeded by the addition of epigallocatechin gallate, the main antioxidant in green tea.

Conclusion

These initial findings do not support addition of antioxidant supplementation to improve platinum-based chemotherapeutic efficacy. This study’s approach can serve as a model of how to bring together the two seemingly discordant areas of basic research and community engagement.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request upon execution of a data use agreement.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Translational Laboratory Shared Service at the UMGCCC for conducting the in vivo experiments.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG)—P30CA134274 and by funds through the Maryland Department of Health’s Cigarette Restitution Fund Program.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Dominique Bollino and Nathaniel Woodard contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Dominique Bollino, Christopher R. D’Adamo & Ashkan Emadi

  2. Department of Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Nathaniel Woodard

  3. University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Dominique Bollino, Kayla M. Tighe, Xinrong Ma, Andrea Casildo, Ashkan Emadi & Cheryl L. Knott

  4. Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Christopher R. D’Adamo

  5. Office of Community Outreach and Engagement, University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Cheryl L. Knott

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Contributions

AE and CK conceived the idea and designed the study. NW led phase 1 of the project including survey design, participant recruitment, and data collection/analysis. DB performed the in vitro experiments and data analysis. XM, KMT, and AC carried out in vivo experiments under Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) protocols. NW, DB, CD, CK, and AE wrote the manuscript. All authors have provided consent for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cheryl L. Knott.

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Competing interests

AE has received research grants from Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Amgen, NewLinks, and Servier. AE is a global oncology advisory board member for Amgen and has served as an advisory board member for Genentech, Servier, Kite Pharma, and Secura Bio. AE is a Co-Founder and Scientific Advisors for KinaRx, Inc. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. All experimental protocols were approved by the University of Maryland Baltimore Institutional Review Board and Institutional Biosafety Committee (Protocol 1817227-3). For all animal studies, mice were housed under pathogen-free conditions in a University of Maryland Baltimore Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC)-accredited facility. All experiments were conducted in compliance with Public Health Service (PHS) guidelines for animal research and approved by University of Maryland Baltimore Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Protocol 1021001).

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Not applicable (no participant identifers are included).

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for study participation.

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Bollino, D., Woodard, N., Tighe, K.M. et al. Community-engaged basic science in an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center: antioxidants and chemotherapeutic efficacy. Cancer Causes Control 35, 417–427 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-023-01806-8

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