Senior Sofia Szczepankiewicz (Biomedical Sciences ’26) wants to help cure cancer. Her independent research, conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Sipe, investigates whether a common antidiabetic drug, metformin, can pharmacologically trigger a self-eating process called autophagy in triple negative breast cancer cells and that, when combined with a platinum-based chemotherapy named either cisplatin or oxaliplatin, this process promotes immunogenic cell death. Ultimately, this combination treatment will augment antitumor immune responses that have been observed in a previous in-vivo study done through the 2025 Summer Science Institute at UMW with chemotherapy treatment alone on triple negative breast cancer cells.
Her project investigates a therapeutic strategy to not only induce death, but to also limit tumor recurrence in triple negative breast cancer cells. Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer with limited options for treatment. Cancer, in all types, has a troublesome ability to evade detection from the immune system. One way to prevent tumor recurrence is by engaging the immune system, enabling it to recognize and exterminate cancer cells that may grow into a tumor. Immunogenic cell death is a certain type of cell death that calls upon the immune system, which is the body’s primary defense mechanism against harmful substances, responsible for a cascade of events that detect and eliminate foreign cells such as cancer.
Sofia’s work was presented at: Honors Senior Capstone Fall 2025 Symposium at UMW, Jepson Science Symposium Fall 2025 at UMW, 2025 Fall Undergraduate Research Meeting For the Virginia Academy of Sciences at VSU. She will also present later this spring at the 2026 Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Research Symposium, and at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2026 in Richmond, VA.
Sofia was awarded the Irene Piscopo Rodgers ’59 and James D. Rodgers Student Research Fellowship II scholarship at UMW for the 2025-2026 school year to do this research during her senior year.
Research at UMW has singlehandedly transformed my experience as an undergraduate. Being involved with a tissue culture lab has given me direct exposure to how class concepts have practical application. As I move onward from UMW to pursue further education, I am thankful for the foundation that this independent research has made for my future career as a pharmacist.
And she is one step closer to that future career. After being accepted to all of the pharmacy programs where she applied, Sofia has decided to attend the Hampton University School of Pharmacy next fall.
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