I am very pleased to share my first first-authored paper! My project was funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye during my second year in med school. The day has finally come, but it is a little bit late as I graduated a couple of days ago but I got to say, it was worth it!
At first, I began working on a completely different project involving bacteria and bacterial interference. I continued reading papers and came across epigenetics and histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi). Voila, love at first sight 🙂 I began reading papers on epigenetics and HDACi. I finalized my project idea on the combined use of Temozolomide and Trichostatin A on glioblastoma cell lines.
Temozolomide is a widely used alkylating agent, and Trichostatin A is an HDACi. We expected to see a synergistic effect prior to experiments, but what we concluded at the end from our results was much more fascinating. We have reached the clues of the interplay between the MGMT gene and mismatch repair genes via antagonistic effects between Temozolomide and Trichostatin A!
I can’t thank enough Dr. Taşpınar for his supervision and help throughout med school.
You can read the full text here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12032-023-02079-6.