2-4 December 2015 – A poster presented by Dr Ramkumar Rajendran, a lecturer from the Life Sciences Department in IMU’s School of Pharmacy won the best poster award under the biopharmaceutical sciences and pharmaceutical biotechnology category at the 1st International Conference on Pharmacy Education and Research Network of ASEAN (ASEAN PharmNET1), Bangkok, Thailand. The award consists of a certificate and a cash prize of TBH 2000 (RM 238.16). The poster titled “The Effects of Glucose and Glutamine Restriction on Lactate Dehydrogenase and Glutaminase in Breast Cancer Cells under Hypoxic Conditions” was authored by Amy Chong Siew Peng, Dr Gan Sook Yee, and Dr Ramkumar Rajendran. It reported the findings of a project conducted by Amy, an IMU Master of Science (MSc) in Molecular Medicine student. 
The primary objective of Amy’s project was to study the changes that occur during the depletion of specific energy source such as glucose and glutamine under normoxic (normal oxygen) or hypoxic (insufficient oxygen) conditions. This will render essential information regarding the interplay between glucose and glutamine in the regulation of metabolic shift from glycolysis to glutamine metabolism under hypoxic conditions. Ultimately, this project aimed to study the regulation of LDH-A and GLS2 genes under glucose or glutamine depleted conditions in breast cancer cells (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) exposed to normoxia and hypoxia. The findings from this study suggested that LDH-A and GLS2 do play a vital role in the regulation of the metabolic shift from glucose to glutamine metabolism under hypoxic conditions. Dr Rajendran and his team strongly believe that the research findings will help clinicians tremendously in deciding what nutrients to be included or avoided during chemotherapy or radiotherapy to improve treatment outcomes.
Congratulations to Amy Chong, Dr Rajendran, and Dr Gan on winning the award.
