Katy Margulis, PhD

Named Grant:

The Fried Family Memorial Project Grant

About the Investigator:

Dr. Katy Margulis specializes in developing advanced molecular imaging systems to unveil pathological pathways that drive diseases like cancer. Understanding these pathways allows her and her team to design disease-specific therapies that intervene with the abnormal pathways and arrest the progression of the disease. She received a B. Pharm degree and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After postdoctoral training at Stanford University, California she returned to the Hebrew University School of Pharmacy, the Faculty of Medicine, where he is now an Assistant Professor.

About the Research:

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a type of cancer that originates from the mouth mucosa and cannot be cured, as a result, it leads to around 180,000 deaths each year. We know that OSCC relies on certain small molecules related to increased cancer invasiveness, but we are still unsure about the specific molecular pathways that are disrupted. To shed light on this, we plan to use a special imaging technique called Desorption Electrospray Ionization Mass spectrometry Imaging (DESI-MSI), which allows us to visualize the distribution of molecules in human OSCC tissues. We aim to identify targets for potential treatments and improve the detection of tumor margins during surgery.

We will collect samples of human OSCC tissues from surgeries conducted at the Hadassah Medical Center. Using DESI-MSI, we will map the distribution of molecules within these tissues. Our initial findings show that DESI-MSI can detect significant molecular changes in OSCC compared to normal mouth tissue, and recognize cancer regions in tissues initially diagnosed as “not cancer”. We intend to explore potential therapies by inhibiting these molecular changes in cancer cells and in mice implanted with patient-derived tumors. Additionally, we plan to develop a method to identify residual OSCC and pre-cancerous dysplastic tissue, which will help establish precise surgical margins based on molecular characteristics. As a result, we hope to achieve two important outcomes. First, we can discover new treatments that reverse these molecular changes and stop the growth of tumors. Second, we can improve the accuracy of identifying tumor margins during surgery by analyzing the molecular characteristics of the tissue.