by Kristina H. Reardon '08

Rev. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., Ph.D., assistant professor of biology, still remembers his first important discovery in the laboratory as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was 2:00 a.m. and the lab was empty, so he ran into the hallway and flagged down a custodian named Mario.

“I said, ‘Look, Mario! Look!’” Father Austriaco recalled of his first scientific breakthrough, which involved yeast cells. The breakthrough would lead to his discovery of the gene he named Youth 1 (UTH1).

Thanks to his $8,700 grant from PC’s Committee on Aid to Faculty Research (CAFR) for 2006–2007, Father Austriaco worked with students in his Albertus Magnus Hall laboratory this summer, hoping to inspire that kind of excitement in them as they research the question of why cancer cells don’t age.

Father Austriaco became interested in aging as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. “I wanted to understand cancer and was convinced that cancer cells, despite all their different characteristics, had one thing in common: they did not age,” he said.

He is using the CAFR grant to study aging and programmed cell death in yeast, two processes he says are vital to understanding diseases such as cancer, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s. He explained that yeast cells age more quickly than other organisms (such as humans or other mammals), and humans and yeast share rudimentary cell properties which make his research applicable to humans.

“My students and I are trying to figure out this genetic puzzle,” he said, emphasizing their partnership. Assisting him were Daniel Ferrari ’08 of Mansfield, Mass.; Michael Loudin ’08 of Houston, Texas; James Ritch ’08 of Mahopac, N.Y.; Jared Sheehan ’08 of Milford, N.H.; and Joshua Malouin ’09 of Cumberland, R.I.

Father Austriaco and his students will continue to work during this school year on this CAFR-funded project and on National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded projects, which include studies of the aging gene UTH1, the cancer gene BXI1 (Bax-Inhibitor 1), and the aging hormone klotho. They hope to understand how these genes can extend the cell’s
lifespan and cause diseases such as cancer.

In layman’s terms, he said, he is helping to uncover “which genes talk to each other” to ultimately understand what causes cancer and other diseases.

While it may seem that his religious vocation and scientific career could be at odds, “I have never had a problem being a believer, let alone a priest, and a scientist,” he said. “Both science and theology are attempts to study and explain reality in different ways. As a believer, I know the Artist who made the works of art—the cells and the genes—that I study in my lab.”

In addition to their work in the lab, Father Austriaco and his students gave a presentation about their research into these “works of art” at the 17th annual St. Joseph’s University Sigmi Xi Student Research Symposium this summer in Washington, D.C. Malouin was one of two students who won an award in the symposium’s biology competition.