Joanna Wardwell-Ozgo, an assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Kennesaw State University, has received a $720,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the hormonal control of cancer. The funding will also support undergraduate research within the College of Science and Mathematics.
“This project involves getting at the beginnings of various diseases with the help of groundbreaking research involving our students, and that elevates KSU’s research profile,” Wardwell-Ozgo said.
Her research aims to understand how cells respond when hormones bind to proteins known as receptors. This process can have different effects in various parts of the body. For example, during puberty, different tissues receive the same hormone but react differently.
“With hormone pathways, you might grow, you might die, you might change. It’s variable,” Wardwell-Ozgo said. “This grant will investigate the nuance and complexity of this pathway and try to better understand how that one message is causing all these different tissue-specific occurrences to happen.”
Wardwell-Ozgo’s laboratory focuses on hormone signaling during development and disease. She investigates what goes wrong in early stages and how those issues affect later life. After earning her doctorate from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University College of Medicine’s cell biology department, she recognized gaps in understanding hormones’ role in cellular growth.
“I discovered more and more that we actually don’t know what hormones are doing in development,” she said. “Until we understand fully what’s going on in development, it’s hard to study a disease and fully understand the mechanism and the driving force behind that disease.”
The grant also emphasizes undergraduate research opportunities—a priority for Wardwell-Ozgo based on her own experiences as a student researcher.
“I greatly value undergraduate research experience,” she said. I also feel like I’m paying it forward by providing opportunities for students like me to get exposure and get introduced to this wild and wonderful world of science.”
