Kendall Wallace, PhD, Professor, Andrew Skildum, PhD, Assistant Professor, Kenneth Dornfeld, MD, PhD, Adjunct Professor, James Bjork, Researcher 3 in the Wallace lab, and Gavin Folkert, Research Assistant in the Skildum lab collaborated to publish an article in Cell Cycle. 

The article is titled, "Mitochondrial activities play a pivotal role in regulating cell cycle in response to doxorubicin," and discusses how proliferating cells exposed to DNA damaging agents such as doxorubicin must arrest proliferation and repair DNA damage. Data from this work demonstrates how mitochondrial DNA increases in S. cerevisiae (yeast) and human breast cancer cells exposed to doxorubicin. Both increasing and decreasing mitochondrial activity during doxorubicin exposure alters proliferation response in S. cerevisiae. Examining distinct mitochondrial functions during doxorubicin exposure demonstrates TCA cycle activity promotes cell cycle progression while electron transport and oxidative phosphorylation promote arrest.

These findings may improve cancer treatments based on metabolic differences between normal and cancer cells.