Gwen Kester ’24

Major: Cellular Neurobiology; Minor: Chemistry 
Project: “Cytotoxicity Assays of Various Dirhodium Complexes in Cervical and Breast Cancer Cells” 
Advisors: Shari Dunham, associate professor of chemistry; Anastasia Thévenin, assistant professor of biology

While cisplatin is a well-known, commonly used cancer drug, it isn’t always effective. Gwen Kester ’24 knew rhodium had been explored as a possible alternative, but the right structure hadn’t been identified to yield the most effective complex for a possible treatment use. That’s why she chose to study the toxicity of a large variety of dirhodium complexes and test their effectiveness in killing two different types of cancer cells.

During Kester’s research, she tested 10 different dirhodium complexes in cervical cancer cell lines or triple-negative breast cancer cell lines. Overall, she concluded that complexes with one sugar addition showed relatively high levels of toxicity in both cell lines, but they were more effective in triple-negative breast cancer cells.

These experiments spanned several days, and Dr. Shari Dunham and Dr. Anastasia Thévenin supplied Kester with helpful insights regarding her research.

“A major insight they were able to provide is leaving room for failure and accepting it,” Kester says.

Working with living organisms and condition-sensitive complexes elevated the opportunity for mistakes and possible dead ends. For example, many of the complexes Kester studied were not soluble in water, which meant she had to dissolve them in an alternative solvent called acetonitrile. But because acetonitrile is also highly toxic to the cells, this resulted in the need for Kester to dry down her rhodium-acetonitrile solutions to remove the solvent and then redissolve them in water—adding a time-sensitive component to her research.

“It’s part of the learning process of laboratory work, but it is simply part of the research,” Kester says. “It was important to learn to expect and accept the many challenges scientific research may bring.”

Kester plans to finish a few final toxicity studies and test the compounds with regard to their biological targets, where the compounds are going within the cells, and whether they may disrupt a crucial degradation pathway within cells. Her research was presented at the Landmark Conference at Susquehanna University in the summer of 2023, and she hopes to present it at additional conferences in the Lehigh Valley.