Ms. Gency Gunasingh
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Ms. Gency Gunasingh
Research Assistant
Ms. Gency Gunasingh completed her Master of biotechnology degree from University of Queensland in 2012 and did her Masters project under Dr. Andrew Prowse and Prof. Peter Gray at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. Her primary area of research was large scale generation of cardiac progenitors from embryonic stem cells in 3D. She then worked under Prof. Brian Gabrielli at UQ Diamantina institute on developing 3D tumour spheres in melanoma for in vitro drug testing. She currently works for Prof. Nikolas Haass at UQDI on understanding tumour heterogeneity and tumour architecture in melanoma spheroids.
Ask the Experts
Investigating Spheroid Architecture Using the FV3000 Confocal Microscope
Tuesday, 7 September, 2021
Experts
Phenotypic tumour heterogeneity arising due to differentially cycling cell populations has been implicated in increased therapy resistance. This phenomenon cannot be assessed in adherent cell culture, where microenvironmental conditions are homogeneous. Thus, we utilise melanoma spheroids to model the 3D tumour microenvironment including the extracellular matrix (ECM) and study spheroid structure, necrotic region, individual cell arrangement within and gene expression patterns. We achieve this by exploiting the fluorescence ubiquitination cell cycle indicator (FUCCI) system to monitor cell cycle stages as a surrogate marker for phenotypic tumour heterogeneity, tissue clearing and confocal microscopy using FV3000.