Recipients will include this year’s awardees of some of the highest honors the university bestows, including: Pegasus Professor; the Medal of Societal Impact; the Reach for the Stars Award; the Big 12 Faculty Member of the Year Award; and the Champion of Student Success and Well-Being.

Also being honored are university excellence award winners; those who recently reached milestone years of service; Faculty Senate service awardees; faculty granted ±đłľ±đ°ůľ±łŮłÜ˛ő ´Ç°ů ±đłľ±đ°ůľ±łŮ˛ąâ€Żstatus; and retired or retiring faculty members.

This year’s celebration includes recognition of Chuck Dziuban, one of the longest-serving and most trailblazing faculty members in school history. His remarkable 55-year-career includes being UCF’s inaugural Pegasus Professor and founding director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.

Starting this year at Founders’ Day, the Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching will be given to underscore the talented faculty behind UCF’s nationally renowned reputation as a leader in in online teaching and learning.

Here are this year’s faculty honorees.

Pegasus Professor Award

Hassan Foroosh,ĚýCollege of Engineering and Computer Science

Carmen Giurgescu, College of Nursing

Annette R. Khaled, College of Medicine

Matthew Marino, College of Community Innovation and Education

Reach for the Stars Award

John Bush, College of Business

Ana Carolina de Souza Feliciano, Office of Research

Shyam Kattel, College of Sciences

Kevin Moran, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Soyoung Park, College of Community Innovation and Education

Hao Zheng, College of Engineering and Computer Sciences

Medal of Societal Impact Award

Zhihua Qu, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Champion of Student Success and Well-Being Award

Suha Saleh,ĚýCollege of Health Professions and Sciences

Big 12 Faculty Member of the Year

Deborah Beidel, College of Sciences

Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching

College Awardees

Tanvir Ahmed, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Norine Blanch, College of Community Innovation and Education

Matthew Bryan, College of Arts and Humanities

Peter Delfyett, College of Optics and Photonics

Nyla Dil, College of Medicine

Katia Ferdowsi, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Murat Hancer, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Deborah Horzen, College of Arts and Humanities

Richard Jerousek, College of Sciences

Betsy Kalin, College of Sciences

Evelin Pegoraro, College of Arts and Humanities

Richard Plate, College of Community Innovation and Education

Alfons Schulte, College of Sciences

Nicholas Shrubsole, College of Arts and Humanities

Daniel Stephens, College of Community Innovation and Education

Wei Sun, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Danielle Webster, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Sara Willox, College of Business

Xiaohu Xia, College of Sciences

Widaad Zaman, College of Sciences

şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Winner

Norine Blanch, College of Community Innovation and Education

Excellence in Graduate Teaching

College Awardees

Shaurya Agarwal, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Kim Anderson, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Christopher Blackwell, College of Nursing

Shannon Carter, College of Sciences

Sasan Fathpour, College of Optics and Photonics

Murat Hancer, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Dana Joseph, College of Business

Magdalena Pasarica, College of Medicine

Mel Stanfill, College of Arts and Humanities

Vassiliki Zygouris-Coe, College of Community Innovation and Education

şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Winner

Christopher Blackwell, College of Nursing

Excellence in Research

College Awardees

Sarah Bush, College of Community Innovation and Education

Zixi (Jack) Cheng, College of Medicine

Enrique Del Barco, College of Sciences

Romain Gaume, College of Optics and Photonics

Nan Hua, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Kevin Mullally, College of Business

Matthew Stock, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Ladda Thiamwong, College of Nursing

Subith Vasu, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Cyrus Zargar, College of Arts and Humanities

şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Winner

Enrique Del Barco, College of Sciences

Chuck D. Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching

Nicole Lapeyrouse, College of Sciences

Excellence in Faculty Academic Advising

Emily Proulx, College of Arts and Humanities

Excellence in Professional Service

Linda Walters, College of Sciences

Excellence in Librarianship

Katy Miller, UCF Libraries

Excellence in Instructional Design

Amy Sugar, Division of Digital Learning

şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Award for Excellence in Mentoring Doctoral Students

Engineering, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences

Subith Vasu, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Social Science, Humanities, Education, Business, Art and Health

David Boote, College of Community Innovation and Education

şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Award for Excellence in Mentoring Postdoctoral Scholars

Kausik Mukhopadhyay, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Thomas Wahl, College of Engineering and Computer Science

20 Years of Service

Haiyan Bai, College of Community Innovation and Education

Brian Barone, College of Arts and Humanities

Aman Behal, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Corinne Bishop, UCF Libraries

Joseph Brennan, College of Sciences

Mark Calabrese, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Li-Mei Chen, College of Medicine

Baiyun Chen, Division of Digital Learning

Joshua Colwell, College of Sciences

William Crampton, College of Sciences

Richard Curcio, College of Business

Donovan Dixon, College of Sciences

Martin Dupuis, Burnett Honors College

Michelle Dusseau, College of Sciences

Dorin Dutkay, College of Sciences

Kirk Gay, College of Arts and Humanities

Deborah German, College of Medicine

William Hagedorn, College of Community Innovation and Education

Joseph Harrington, College of Sciences

Fayeza Hasanat, College of Arts and Humanities

Bobby Hoffman, College of Community Innovation and Education

Elizabeth Hoffman, College of Community Innovation and Education

Alisha Janowsky, College of Sciences

Abdelkader Kara, College of Sciences

David Kwun, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Stephen Lambert, College of Medicine

Peter Larson, College of Arts and Humanities

Joseph LaViola Jr., College of Engineering and Computer Science

Edgard Maboudou, College of Sciences

Kevin Mackie, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Iryna Malendevych, College of Community Innovation and Education

Jonathan Matusitz, College of Sciences

Holly McDonald, College of Arts and Humanities

Florin Mihai, College of Arts and Humanities

Olga Molina, College of Health Professions and Sciences

George Musambira, College of Sciences

Nina Orlovskaya, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Talat Rahman, College of Sciences

25 Years of Service

Laura Albers-Biddle, College of Community Innovation and Education

Steven Berman, College of Sciences

Tarek Buhagiar, College of Business

Melissa Dagley, College of Sciences

Sabatino DiBernardo, College of Arts and Humanities

Mark Dickie, College of Business

Ivan Garibay, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Anthony Grajeda, College of Arts and Humanities

Bari Hoffman, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Steven Hornik, College of Business

Anna Jones, College of Arts and Humanities

Mikhail Klimov, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Stefanie Mayfield Garcia, College of Business

Rudy McDaniel, College of Arts and Humanities

Rachel Mulvihill, UCF Libraries

Christopher Niess, College of Arts and Humanities

Eugene Paoline, College of Community Innovation and Education

Sumanta Pattanaik, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Tison Pugh, College of Arts and Humanities

Walter Sotero, College of Sciences

Suren Tatulian, College of Sciences

Nizam Uddin, College of Sciences

Lei Wei, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Graham Worthy, College of Sciences

Shin-Tson Wu, College of Optics and Photonics

30 Years of Service

Charlie Abraham, College of Arts and Humanities

Helen Becker, College of Business

James Campbell, College of Arts and Humanities

Karl X. Chai, College of Medicine

Ratna Chakrabarti, College of Medicine

Jill Fjelstul, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Barbara Fritzsche, College of Sciences

Nora Lee GarcĂ­a, College of Arts and Humanities

Linwood Jones, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Alexander Katsevich, College of Sciences

Kuotsai Tom Liou, College of Community Innovation and Education

Lisa Logan, College of Arts and Humanities

Humberto LĂłpez Cruz, College of Arts and Humanities

Eric Martin, Office of Research

Kevin Meehan, College of Arts and Humanities

Charles H. Reilly, Office of the Provost

Timothy Rotarius, College of Community Innovation and Education

Peter Spyers-Duran, UCF Libraries

Alexander Tovbis, College of Sciences

Laurence von Kalm, College of Sciences

Linda Walters, College of Sciences

Bruce Wilson, College of Sciences

Hong Zhang, College of Arts and Humanities

Ying Zhang, UCF Libraries

35 Years of Service

Issa Batarseh, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Alain Kassab, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Mansooreh Mollaghasemi, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Robert Peale, College of Sciences

Chung-Ching Wang, College of Sciences

40 Years of Service

Ahmad Elshennawy, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Michael Georgiopoulos, College of Engineering and Computer Science

David Hagan, College of Optics and Photonics

Anna Lillios, College of Arts and Humanities

Mubarak Shah, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Kalpathy Sundaram, College of Engineering and Computer Science

45 Years of Service

Robert Rivers, College of Arts and Humanities

55 Years of Service

Chuck Dziuban, Division of Digital Learning

Faculty Emeritus and Emerita

Lynn Casmier-Paz, College of Arts and Humanities

James Clark, College of Arts and Humanities

Teresa Dorman, College of Sciences

Chuck Dziuban, Division of Digital Learning

Amy Giroux, College of Arts and Humanities

Glenda Gunter, College of Community Innovation and Education

Michael Hampton, College of Sciences

Richard Hofler, College of Business

Robin Kohn, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Piotr Mikusinski, College of Sciences

Ram Mohapatra, College of Sciences

Donna Neff, College of Nursing

Alice Noblin, College of Community Innovation and Education

Robert Peale, College of Sciences

Trey Philpotts, College of Arts and Humanities

Robin Roberts, College of Business

Sherron Killingsworth Roberts, College of Community Innovation and Education

Lisa Roney, College of Arts and Humanities

Sybil St. Claire, College of Arts and Humanities

Terry Ann Thaxton, College of Arts and Humanities

Deborah Weaver, College of Arts and Humanities

Retired Faculty

Ahlam Al-Rawi, College of Sciences

Donna Breit, College of Nursing

Martha Brenckle, College of Arts and Humanities

Chinyen Chuo, Student Success and Well-Being

Therese Coleman, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Robertico Croes, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Juli Dixon, College of Community Innovation and Education

Teresa Dorman, College of Sciences

Chuck Dziuban, Division of Digital Learning

Philip Fairey, Office of Research

John Fauth, College of Sciences

Amy Giroux, College of Arts and Humanities

Glenda Gunter, College of Community Innovation and Education

Michael Hampton, College of Sciences

Roger Handberg, College of Sciences

C. Keith Harrison, College of Business

Randall Hewitt, College of Community Innovation and Education

Rebecca Hines, College of Community Innovation and Education

Richard Hofler, College of Business

Charlie Hughes, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Alvaro Islas, College of Sciences

Mourad Ismail, College of Sciences

David Jenkins, College of Sciences

Michael Johnson, Office of the Provost

Dayle Jones, College of Community Innovation and Education

Denise Kay, College of Medicine

Gary Leavens, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Mary Little, College of Community Innovation and Education

Humberto LĂłpez Cruz, College of Arts and Humanities

Michael Macedonia, Office of Research

Wasfy Mikhael, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Piotr Mikusinski, College of Sciences

Roslyn Miller, Division of Digital Learning

Ram Mohapatra, College of Sciences

Vicki Montoya, College of Nursing

Brian Moore, College of Sciences

Donna Felber Neff, College of Nursing

Alice Noblin, College of Community Innovation and Education

Peggy Nuhn, UCF Libraries

Joyce Nutta, College of Community Innovation and Education

Jeffrey O’Brien, College of Business

Bendegul Okumus, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Fevzi Okumus, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

Robert Peale, College of Sciences

Trey Philpotts, College of Arts and Humanities

Brian Plamondon, Office of Research

Michael Proctor, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Enrique Puig, College of Community Innovation and Education

Pedro Quintana-Ascencio, College of Sciences

Mark Rapport, College of Sciences

Sherron Roberts, College of Community Innovation and Education

Kelly Schaffer, College of Community Innovation and Education

Elzbieta Sikorska, College of Sciences

Jo Smith, Division of Digital Learning

Sybil St. Claire, College of Arts and Humanities

Mark Steiner, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Raymond Surette, College of Community Innovation and Education

Terry Ann Thaxton, College of Arts and Humanities

Patti Thielemann, College of Nursing

Cheryl Van De Mark, College of Community Innovation and Education

Martine Vanryckeghem, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Jane Vaughan, College of Arts and Humanities

Scott Warfield, College of Arts and Humanities

Debbie Weaver, College of Arts and Humanities

Philip Wessel, College of Community Innovation and Education

James Whitworth, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Boguslawa Anna Wolford, College of Community Innovation and Education

Laine Wyatt, College of Arts and Humanities

Cherie Yestrebsky, College of Sciences

Martin Klapheke, College of Medicine

Stephen Lambert, College of Medicine

Olga Molina, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Euripides Montagne, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Darlin’ Neal, College of Arts and Humanities

Michael Pape, College of Business

Tison Pugh, College of Arts and Humanities

David Young, College of Sciences

Annette Khaled, who leads the College of Medicine’s cancer research division, recently received more than $2 million in grant funding to expand her work with Z-TOP, a peptide she discovered in 2012 that stops the spread of metastatic cancer cells. She is collaborating with colleagues to design a better cellular delivery system for the treatment.

An almost $258,000 grant through the Casey DeSantis Cancer Research Program’s Florida Cancer Innovation Fund will help Khaled’s team further their efforts to stop metastatic breast cancer by disrupting the cellular activities that allow cancer cells to spread. And nearly $1.8 million in funding through the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), in partnership with the Orlando Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, will allow her to develop the treatment for men with late-stage metastatic prostate cancer.

Khaled says her research has expanded thanks to the support of the Orlando Sports Foundation, which funds cancer research through sports-related fundraising events. The nonprofit’s flagship event is the StaffDNA Cure Bowl, a unique college football game with the goal of ending cancer.

“When you get funding for a research project, you can only do the work that is described in the specific aims of the project,” she says. “The donations from the Orlando Sports Foundation do not have this limitation. Without their support, I would not have been awarded the DOD grant. Using the donations, I was able to generate the preliminary data that made me competitive for the DOD and the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) grants we received this year.”

Alan Gooch ’84 ’89MA, CEO of the Orlando Sports Foundation and executive director of the StaffDNA Cure Bowl, says he’s grateful to continue partnering with UCF.

“We’re all about bringing teams together,” says Gooch, who played football at UCF and later coached the team for 22 years. “Our relationship with Dr. Khaled is outstanding, and we are honored to continue to partner with her and sponsor her research.”

The Science Behind Khaled’s Work

The two new grants expand Khaled’s portfolio of research to understand how and why cancer cells spread.

“Cancer treatments are very effective when the cancer is localized, but the problem is that cancer doesn’t stay at one site,” she says. “It spreads to other sites of the body. Usually, the cause of death is not the primary cancer, but metastasis. Preventing that can be a cancer cure, and that is what we’re looking at here in our lab.”

Khaled’s latest research focuses on the spread of cell fragments called extracellular vesicles that are shed by cancer cells during the early stages of the disease. These vesicles are resilient to early cancer treatment and can travel through the bloodstream, acting as tumor “seeds” by preparing future sites for metastasis.

The vesicles are mediated by a molecular structure called a chaperonin. Chaperonins help fold proteins that support the body’s normal cell function. But cancer cells hijack the folding process because they need more chaperonins to grow and spread.

Khaled’s breast cancer research project aims to distinguish which chaperonins help facilitate cancer cells’ growth and stop them without harming normal chaperonins. She hopes to develop a treatment that could regularly deliver her peptide to cancer patients to prevent metastasis. Patients, Khaled says, could receive her treatment while they are receiving chemotherapy and radiation to kill the original tumor.

Her prostate cancer research will confirm the chaperonin as a viable treatment target for prostate cancer, and if so, optimize the peptide specifically for use in men who have lethal forms of metastatic prostate cancer. Unlike breast cancer treatment, which seeks to prevent metastasis, prostate cancer research will see if a strengthened variant of the peptide can eliminate cancer that has already spread.

Fielding a Team Against Cancer

In the lab, Khaled’s peptide has shown success in preventing cancer cells from spreading. The challenge is how to engineer and deliver the treatment. For that, she is collaborating with Lorraine Leon, associate professor of materials science at UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science.

They are working to create a system that delivers the peptide to where the cancer has spread and at the same time protects the peptide from being destroyed in the bloodstream by the body’s immune and digestive systems.

“The College of Engineering and Computer Science is a great collaborator,” Khaled says. “Normally this peptide is very fragile but we’re working with materials sciences to create a protected peptide and then find [a] way to get it to the right spot. By having a variety of expertise and interests, we can work together to find new technologies and new ways to combat cancer.”

Leon specializes in biomaterials and polymer science. Her team studies how to build and program molecules to form assemblies for many purposes, including biomedical transport. She developed a specialized polymer that binds to the peptide, forming a large, water-soluble molecule. This allows it to travel easily through the bloodstream while keeping the peptide intact as it reaches its destination. The system drives the molecules to form self-assembled structures called micelles, which are assemblies of around 100 or so individual molecules, Leon says.

“In addition, we can tune the shape of these micelles, decorate them with targeting elements and make mixed versions of them where we incorporate different functionalities,” she says. “Our original designs have had great preliminary results so far. We will continue to optimize the designs moving forward.”

Leon is excited to team up with Khaled, and she says she looks forward to achieving more breakthroughs together as the projects progress.

“Working with Dr. Khaled has been very fun,” she says. “Our labs really complement each other. This is the beginning of a very long collaboration.”

Khaled and Leon are also working with Cancer Specialist and Associate Professor of Medicine Deborah Altomare, along with Burnett School of Biomedical Science Biostatistician Xiang Zhu, on the prostate cancer research project.

Khaled says strong research and community collaborations are critical to beating cancer.

“Cancer is a tough enemy,” she says. “But we have a great team.”

These studies are the first phase of preclinical research that may lead to new drugs in the future.

This work was supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs,Ěýin the amount of $1,771,271,Ěýthrough the Prostate Cancer Research Program Idea Development Award under Award No. HT9425-25-1-0487. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Researchers’ Credentials:

Khaled joined UCF in 2002 after receiving her doctoral degree from the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Florida and doing post-graduate training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). A tenured professor, she has been funded by multiple R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the FDOH. She has published more than 100 manuscripts and abstracts and presented her research at numerous national and international scientific meetings. She has been recognized with research, leadership and teaching awards, including the NCI CURE Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to her research responsibilities, she teaches molecular immunology to UCF graduate students and serves as the College of Medicine’s assistant dean for faculty affairs.

Leon joined UCF in 2017 after postdoctoral appointments at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and she received her doctoral degree from the City şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of New York. She is a recently tenured professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where she also serves as the education director for the U.S. National Science Foundation PREM Center for Quantum Materials Innovation and Education Excellence. She has published more than 20 refereed publications. Other accomplishments include her being named a 2019 Emerging Investigator by the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, receiving an NSF CAREER award in 2021 and a 3M Non-Tenured Faculty award in 2022.

The medical school’s Cancer Research Division focuses on cancer biology — such as how patients’ genes play a role in their cancer risk, what causes cancer and cancer metastasis, and new ways to use the immune system to fight cancer. Their goal: Discover innovative, targeted treatments that attack at the cellular level what cancers cells need to survive, rather than chemotherapy and radiation that blast a patient’s entire system and cause strong side effects.

“Cancer cells are like every other cell in your body, they need to survive, grow and get nutrients,” says Annette Khaled, who leads UCF’s Cancer Research Division. “If we can target those basic needs of cancer cells, then we have a therapy that not only works for breast cancer but works for many other cancers.”

As the nation recognizes October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, here are five of UCF’s breast cancer research specialists.

Annette Khaled: Tracking Metastatic Breast Cancer for Better Treatment
Khaled’s research focuses on metastatic breast cancer, cells that leave the original tumor and spread.

“Breast cancer, when it is detected in the breast, is almost 99% survivable, but when breast cancer spreads to other parts of the body and damages vital organs like the lungs and the brain, that is very hard to treat,” she explained.

Her lab has discovered a new way to track metastatic cancer cells in the blood, a liquid biopsy, which could help identify cancer earlier and give patients more treatment options.

Cancer cells need a lot of proteins to survive and travel through the body. Khaled has identified a protein complex called a chaperonin that lets proteins fold into functional, three-dimensional shapes. All cells contain the chaperonin complex. But cancer cells have significantly higher levels because, as Khaled explains, “cancer cells are hungry for protein.” In the past few years, Khaled identified the chaperonin complex as a significant indicator of a cancer’s severity and has developed nanoparticle-based therapies to seek out the chaperonin complex in cancer cells and destroy it. Without this protein-folding mechanism, cancer cells starve and die.

Jackie Zhao: Why is Breast Cancer Resistant to Treatment?

Zhao wants to discover why metastasized breast cancer is resistant to even the most promising therapies. That understanding could unlock medicine’s ability to create cures for any type of cancer.

In his research, Zhao has found that metastasized cancer cells disarm the immune system, making therapies like immunotherapy, which can be incredibly effective, relatively inert.

“There are great anti-cancer therapies that work for other forms of cancer like melanoma, but metastasized breast cancer is resistant. What we try to do is figure out why,” he says.  “If we can do that, we can make breast cancer sensitive to these very effective therapies as well.”

Ratna Chakrabarti: Finding Marks to Better Predict Breast Cancer

When doctors treat and predict the progression of cancer, they often look for specific receptors which can act as markers to target treatment and predict cancer growth.

Chakrabarti is looking for new markers or alternative solutions to provide better tools for patient care.  Specific types of breast cancer like triple negative breast cancer, named because it does not possess three common receptors, can be difficult to treat.

“We want to find different targets which can be used as predictive markers,” she says. “Right now, we are working so that when patients come to the clinic, there will be different tools to understand the status of the disease and let them make an informed decision for treatment.”

Robin Hines: Understanding Healthcare Disparities in Breast Cancer Treatment and Survival

Hines, from the medical school’s Department of Population Health Sciences, is fighting breast cancer from a community perspective.

His team found that while breast cancer mortality rates have declined over the last few decades, Black women are still twice as likely to die from breast cancer compared to other ethnicities. That finding, he says, is a call to action.

“We want to ensure that the public, everyone in society, has the best opportunity to have the best health outcomes possible,” he says. “So when we identify population groups that are not having the health outcomes we would like, it is important — and speaking for myself it is my duty — to use my training to do something about these unfair or inequitable situations.”

Deborah Altomare: Taking a Two-Pronged Approach to Fighting Cancer

Cancer cells have main pathways they use to interact with the environment. Traditional cancer drugs block these main pathways, forcing cells to use far less effective pathways.

Altomare’s lab is researching how, through a combination of cancer therapies, both pathways can be blocked, disrupting cancer cells’ ability to grow and spread to other parts of the body.

“Cancer cells build resistance to traditional therapies by finding new pathways once our drugs have blocked their main ones,” she says. “However, if we can use other drugs, which block these lesser used pathways, in combination with the traditional ones, we have a therapy that can be effective against resistant cancers.”

UCF’s breast cancer researchers have earned over $2 million in grants for their work, including from the Florida Breast Cancer Research Foundation and proceeds from NCAA football’s Cure Bowl in Orlando. While the team is small in number, “we have the intellect, creativity and energy to compete with the big guys,” Khaled says. “Our scientists are original thinkers with new cutting-edge ideas.”

To learn more about the UCF College of Medicine’s cancer research.

In the latest issue of PLOS ONE, Professor Annette Khaled’s research lab reported using a protein complex called a chaperonin as a new marker for cancer cells in blood — that provides a clearer indication of spreading cancer. By using the new marker, UCF scientists were able to detect more cancer cells in the blood, a procedure called liquid biopsy, which could help patients suffering from breast and lung cancers better monitor their disease.

Cancer cells need a lot of proteins to survive and travel through the body. The chaperonin complex lets proteins fold into functional, three-dimensional shapes. Without the complex, important proteins needed by cancer cells can’t form. All cells contain the chaperonin complex. But cancer cells have significantly higher levels because as Khaled says, “cancer cells are hungry for protein.”

In the past few years, Khaled identified the chaperonin complex as a significant indicator of a cancer’s severity and has developed nanoparticle-based therapies to seek out the chaperonin complex in cancer cells and destroy it. Without this protein-folding mechanism, cancer cells starve and die.

“The more chaperonin complex, the more advanced the cancer,” Khaled says. “By using the chaperonin complex to detect cancer cells in blood, we get a warning that the cancer may be spreading. Using the chaperonin complex to detect cancer cells in blood is a unique solution for a non-invasive diagnosis.”

Markers to identify cancer cells in blood are commonly based on epithelial features in cells that line surfaces of the body from which cancers arise. But such markers to detect cancer cells in blood are fairly “generic and provide little information about the cancer itself,” Khaled says. Cancer cells that are shed into blood can come from any part of the tumor and don’t survive past a few hours.  So, using a marker like the chaperonin complex that identifies dangerous cancer cells circulating in blood could alert doctors that a patient is relapsing or not responding to treatments.

Khaled is head of the College of Medicine’s Division of Cancer Research. Her study began by using blood and tissues from metastatic breast cancer patients being treated at Orlando Health’s UF Cancer Center to test if the chaperonin complex was better than traditional markers to identify cancer cells in blood. Then with blood from lung cancer patients, she validated this idea and found that using the chaperonin complex detected more lung cancer cells compared to standard methods for liquid biopsy.

The UCF research team used the FDA-approved CELLSEARCH System, that was purchased thanks to a generous donation from the Catherine McCaw-Engelman and Family Cancer Research Collaborative Fund, set up to honor a Winter Park, Florida, woman who died of colon cancer that was not detected until it had spread. The equipment can isolate, photograph and count cancer cells from a single tube of blood and was adapted for detection of the chaperonin complex in blood cells.

The findings come as a result of $1.5 million Khaled has received over the past seven years from Orlando’s Cure Bowl, the only NCAA college football bowl game created specifically to support a cause — cancer research. Khaled’s latest Cure Bowl grant of $60,000 will be presented to her at the game in December.

Khaled joined UCF in 2002 after receiving her Ph.D. from the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Florida and doing post graduate training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). A tenured professor, she has been funded by multiple RO1 grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and most recently the Florida Department of Health. She has published more than 100 manuscripts and abstracts and presented her research at numerous national and international scientific meetings.  She has been recognized with research, leadership and teaching awards including the NCI CURE Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to her research responsibilities, she teaches molecular immunology to UCF graduate students and serves as the College of Medicine’s assistant dean for Faculty Affairs.

Produced by UCF, the podcast highlights students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni who do incredible things on campus, in the community and around the globe.

Transcript

Annette Khaled: We need to do research to better understand what happens when we don’t catch cancer early, when a patient now has metastatic cancer that has spread, and can we develop better ways of helping these patients.

Because that’s where death occurs. Death and breast cancer are linked to the cancer spreading. So, understanding that process is essential for research.

Alex Cumming: Hey Knight Nation, what an interesting and enlightening conversation that I got to have with Dr. Annette Khaled from UCF’s College of Medicine. Dr. Khaled is the head of the Division of Cancer Research at UCF and has been recognized for her breast cancer research specifically in breast cancer metastases. In today’s episode, we speak about the personal experiences that she’s had that drive the passion for her work, collaborative culture of teamwork, optimism, and humanity here at UCF, and some of the biggest mysteries of breast cancer that we’re still trying to solve. Let’s jump into.

So to begin, how did your interest with medicine, specifically working with breast cancer, develop?

Annette Khaled: Yeah, that’s a great question.

So my background — I’m a basic scientist. I really don’t work directly in medicine — I ask those basic biology questions. Why do things happen? Years back, I was working to understand how cells die. What causes a cell to die when it’s happily growing and suddenly all its growth signals go? What’s happening inside of that cell? And it really was in the process of understanding the molecular events that were happening in these dying cells that led us to discover what could potentially be a therapeutic for cancer. And that’s how we ended up now jumping into breast cancer and really working on both a therapeutic and a diagnostic for breast cancer. Moving from those basic discoveries to some application in medicine.

Alex Cumming: Wow. How cool?

So as of this year, the World Health Organization has found that breast cancer is the most common cancer globally. Can you share with me some of the importance of early screenings for breast cancer, as well as the need for continuous research of the disease?

Annette Khaled: Both those aspects are tied together. So early screening – cannot emphasize enough the importance. Any cancer, especially breast cancer, if you find it early, when it’s still inside the breast, it’s still localized to one place in the breast, it’s much easier to treat. You can remove it surgically. You can treat it, and outcomes are like 90% or 99% survival. So early screening is essential.

And then, why do we have to do research? Well unfortunately, for some people, they don’t catch it early. Sometimes they catch it when it’s already showing symptoms and spreading. It may be in the liver, it may be in the brain and the bones. And at that point we don’t have enough of an understanding about how that happened, why that happened. So we need to do research to better understand what happens when we don’t catch it early, when a patient now has metastatic cancer that has spread. And then can we develop better ways of helping these patients. Because that’s when death occurs. Death and breast cancer are linked to that cancer spreading. So understanding that process is essential for research.

Alex Cumming: Are there things you can notice within somebody that maybe they should say to themselves, “I should get checked because I’m having this symptom or I’m feeling this sort of lump or I am just feeling off.”

Annette Khaled: Cancer is hidden. Cancer is your own body. It’s your own tissues, doing bad stuff to you. And so it’s really hard to wait for symptoms. That’s why screening is much more important. You should be screening yourself. And there’s guidelines, you should be screening by a certain age, by a certain risk factors.

You can do genetic testing, but it’s only a portion of cancers that are linked to a genetic outcome. So from my perspective, and it’s my own personal opinion, I think early screening is the best way. Get your mammograms every year. When you’re due, get your mammograms. Don’t wait for the symptoms because sometimes when the symptoms show up, it’s too late.

Alex Cumming: That’s good to be proactive instead of being forced to be reactive, sort of getting ahead of the curve.

Annette Khaled: Exactly.

Alex Cumming: What you’re saying it sounds as though a lot of people are forced to enter that reactive phase due to maybe outside circumstances that prevented them from being proactive on the situation. And when you’re in that reactive phase, it sounds like you have go all in on focusing on how can I give myself the best opportunity to treat this. And it sounds like from what you’re saying is that a lot of people don’t go into this alone. They have these circles in these groups that support them and help them along the way.

And as mentioned, breast cancer is one of the most common cancers found globally, support to know that you’re not alone in this situation, you find that’s an important —

Annette Khaled: And not to be — it’s scary, right? You get a cancer diagnosis. I have cancer. “What did I do? Why has this happened to me? Did I do something?” Disease just happens sometimes. And having support, having an understanding that there are great therapies out there. The survival is so much better now than it was in the past for breast cancer. There’s lots of treatment options and just get the support you need. You’re not doing this alone. We have great support systems for breast cancer. So I’m glad you said that. We can do things if you have, unfortunately, that cancer diagnosis. There are many avenues available.

Alex Cumming: My grandmother is a breast cancer survivor, so breast cancer awareness is a very personal topic for me. Of course she had it, I’m so thankful that she survived, beat it. I was younger, so I wasn’t fully able to grasp how it affects somebody’s body, but I saw firsthand how it affects the lives of my own personal family and herself. I’m so thankful that she lives in Florida, so we’re able to visit her and to be there for her in this time. And I mean, there’s just this weight that comes off of just this collective of people when we found out that she had overcome it.

Annette Khaled: It’s beating it that gives you that, “Wow, this is not the end of my life. This is something that happened along my life.” And that’s what drives the research as well, as being able to advance that. Hopefully to the point where your grandkids will no longer see cancer as a threat. Cancer happens, there’s treatments. It goes away, we’re done. And hopefully take that threat from our lives.

Alex Cumming: When my grandmother was affected by it, she was in, I believe, late 60s, early 70s. And when she beat it she was in her mid, I believe, mid-70s. So, we have this joke, nothing’s going to keep her down. Nothing’s going to stop her from beating breast cancer in her 70s. It was a really just something that you don’t forget. You don’t forget that period of your life, where it was in the back of your head. We were like, “This could be just any day, this could happen.”

Annette Khaled: So true.

Alex Cumming: So to transition from that, and that you spent nearly a decade studying ways to inhibit breast cancer metastases, which happens when cancer spreads to all other parts of the body. What have been some of the most important discoveries that you’ve found?

Annette Khaled: I think the most important discovery we found, I was telling you earlier that we were studying this death pathway of cells and came up with a therapeutic. Trying to understand how, why the therapeutic was killing, really led us to discover a protein that hadn’t ever been associated with cancer before. And it’s a protein that helps other proteins fold – basically to get the right three-dimensional shape. Proteins have three-dimensional functionalities and so this protein that we found that our therapeutic was targeting was involved in this folding process. That had never been associated with cancer, and especially with metastatic cancer, like you said, the cancer that spread throughout the body. Really finding how this protein was working, how it was contributing to cancer spreading  – that has been probably one of the best discoveries that we have made in the last few years and really drives our research now.

Alex Cumming: Seeing that there’ss these links between parts of the body and how they react when cancer is discovered in the body, is that what you’re saying?

Annette Khaled: Yes. So you think about cancer when it’s inside the breast, when it’s localized, has certain needs, right? , but once the cancer leaves its home in the breast and it travels and it goes through the blood. I mean, the stresses in the blood are horrendous. Most cancer cells die when they hit the bloodstream. But if they do survive, and those that survive need different survival factors than they did when they were in the home, in the breast. And then think of that, they have to now land in a new place, like they end up in the liver and the liver is very different from the breast, and it’s very different from the blood. They have to learn to adapt to that new environment. So the protein that we’ve been studying, we think helps those cancer cells do exactly that — survive while they’re in the bloodstream, survive when they get to the new site in the liver to grow and colonize again.

That’s why it’s of interest to us. Because if what we’re discovering is true, then we do have a really great target as a therapeutic target for these types of metastatic cancers.

Alex Cumming: We spoke about the community aspect of this. Do you find the mental well-being of a patient can be akin to the medical wellbeing?

Annette Khaled: Oh, that is so true. I think just having hope. And I think that’s part of. I mean I really enjoy interacting and talking, like I am today with you, talking to anybody who interested in what we do. Because I think it gives people hope to know that my laboratory and all the other people in the cancer division, we’re all working hard on trying to find cures for cancer — that we have their back. We’re doing this because we want to be able to give them hope that maybe we can’t cure cancer today, but we’re working hard to find new discoveries that will lead to new treatments for cancer in the future.

Alex Cumming: I love what you’re saying about the hope and the optimism and to know every day students are waking up and going to places like UCF, where their focus is cancer research. And that there’s this generation of students worldwide who are working, again individual types of cancer, but that every day students are going and that cancer research departments are still prominent and are funded and are in a vital aspect of health departments at universities.

Annette Khaled: I love that you said that because that’s so true. Sometimes you forget because you’re taking classes and you’ve got deadlines and you’ve got to write your papers and your dissertation or whatever. But at the end of the day, what you’re doing is bringing hope to people.

It’s doing research that’s going to lead to new advances that one day, it may take five years, it may take 10 years, 20 years ,who knows how much it takes, but that someday you can say, “I was part of that,” or “I was there when that happened, I was contributing to that process.”

Alex Cumming: What’s so nice, and this goes to most, all forms of medicine, is that a lot of these kids are doing it between the ages of 18 to [when they become] doctor, maybe mid-to-late 20s.

Annette Khaled: Or early 20s. Yeah.

Alex Cumming: Have their whole lives to work, to develop all these various research and treatments and it’s so cool. And to repeat what you said, hope, optimism.

On top of all your own research and your duties as a tenured professor, you’re also the head of the Division of Cancer Research here at UCF. What’s it like to oversee such an important division?

Annette Khaled: Oh that’s a lot to say in one sentence. I really enjoy working with people and being part of helping to lead the cancer division. There’s about, I want to say 11 or 12 researchers that fall under that division. It’s part of what I do every day. It’s not separate. I do my own research, but I also have that eye on the division as a whole to bring them together. So it really integrates very well with my current duties. I don’t see it as a separate thing, but it really falls alongside the things that I do every day. I teach students, I teach classes, I run my own lab. But part of that process is also keeping that global idea of how I can help my fellow colleagues in the cancer division also be successful. And so it’s all aligned together.

Alex Cumming: That you have to manage and understand what’s going on with everybody outside of yourself, but then also focusing on your own work, I can imagine that’s a lot to juggle at some times.

Annette Khaled: Well, like I said, it happens in parallel. We’re very collaborative. And so, as I said, it’s not really more work for me. It just aligns with the work that I currently do. The success in my lab extends to the division and the division successes feed back into mine. It’s become like a synergy. We’re all in it together. One person’s success is everybody’s success.

Alex Cumming: I love that. I imagine in a cancer research department egos are probably set aside and there’s not this competitive drive because one person’s success is everybody’s success.

I mean, in my own theatrical experience, yeah there’s egos every now and then. But it’s like, if you’re good for the show and the show was good, that’s on everybody.

Annette Khaled: Yeah, we’re a team.  Everybody’s doing their research and their thing, but cancer is very collaborative. It’s a field where you really lean a lot on each other. Everybody’s got an expertise, I don’t have to be the expert of every single thing. I can go to my colleagues and say, “I want to do this experiment you’ve done it in your lab. Can you help me do it in mine?” And this is, the ideal situation you’ve got this great team of folks that all have that joint vision of, yeah, we’re going to cure cancer one day. Not today, maybe, but down the road that’s our very ambitious goal. But we’ll help each other today to do the things that we need to do.

Alex Cumming: It sounds like collaboration, teamwork and synergy are what helped you balance your responsibilities.

Annette Khaled: Exactly. You got it. Exactly.

Alex Cumming: That seems to be a running trend here at UCF. With all of the amazing people I’ve had the pleasure to speak with, is that UCF is just such a, and again this is not a new thought, but it’s just a great place for collaboration and teamwork are two of the big takeaways that you mentioned.

Everybody has their departments, but all the departments work together. And when all the departments are doing is great that just makes UCF look great.

Annette Khaled: I don’t know if it’s just because of the way — we’re a young institution, right? In many ways, even biomedical research is barely a decade old, so we are still building our reputation. We’re building our credibility in the state. And that part of that helps us lean on each other more maybe than if we were in a nice established, fully funded institution with all the bells and whistles. Most people can thrive on their own better, but you know here we really rely on each other to help each other move forward.

Alex Cumming: That’s why I love this place. A moment ago, we spoke about my personal experience with breast cancer, how it affected my life in my younger years. Have you been able to meet families of breast cancer patients through your work?

Annette Khaled: Oh, yeah. I work with two very important organizations for breast cancer in the state of Florida and in Orlando. The Florida Breast Cancer Foundation is a fantastic organization of folks, breast cancer survivors, as well as researchers, doctors, all sorts of individuals, who are really focused to eliminate breast cancer for the state of Florida. And so I’ve been working with that organization for a number of years and really get a chance to interact with all these folks — as I said, breast cancer survivors, breast cancer advocates, for folks that go all the way to Tallahassee and just do their best to get funds to help breast cancer survivors and breast cancer patients in the state of Florida, researchers like myself. So that’s a great organization, the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation.

But I also work locally with the Orlando Sports Foundation and they’re also an organization that’s led by Alan Gooch, who was one of our first football coaches at UCF. He runs this fantastic foundation that is really trying to use sport and sport venues, like football, golf, even bowling, all these venues to drive awareness for breast cancer and fund breast cancer as well, generate funds for breast cancer. So working through that organization. I’ve met great people who really have a big heart and want to make an impact in our community.

So, like I said, I’m really blessed to have those two organizations that I can interact with and meet people

Alex Cumming: You’re wearing the pink, most people won’t be able to see it, but we know wearing pink to signify, to recognize, to honor the work people have gone through and to recognize the hard work that still goes into breast cancer awareness. And to have individuals that promote breast cancer awareness is so special to see is. That this is not just underground, subculture. It is in the general, it is in the zeitgeist. Again, you run into individuals who have experiences with breast cancer, like myself. Most people would be totally unaware that affected me in my younger years. It’s not something that since then I often reflect, but it’s in my memories. And you run into people that you might not realize have had an experience, had a breast cancer scare, had a surgery to maybe remove a piece of themselves. And you don’t realize that wearing pink is so special because it just, it’s there, it exists. You want to recognize it, the pink bracelets that individuals wear. When you noticed it on somebody.

Annette Khaled: And it’s so true because it really says, “We’re here, you’re not alone. This is not a fight you’re doing by yourself and you’ve got all of us wearing pink because we all want to be part of that team, that big universal team that goes beyond Orlando beyond Florida.” That really is a global team that works toward, supporting, and helping, and eliminating in the long run breast cancer.

Alex Cumming: From the families and the patients that you have met, what have you been able to learn?

Annette Khaled: Well, a lot of how they cope. I remember sitting at a lunch one day and talking to a lady who had breast cancer. She’s a survivor and she’s [been] taking treatments for decades that give her hot flashes. Now, you’re young, you’re a man, you don’t know how hot flashes affect women, but I’m going through that and I can tell you it’s miserable. And I cannot imagine dealing for the rest of my life with hot flashes, but she has to because of the treatments she’s getting. And I remember sitting there going like, “Gosh, I wish I could make a therapeutic this woman could take in place of what she’s taking right now and help her have a better quality of life so that she’s not living with these hot flashes.”

It’s just things like that. But I found, just interacting with people made me appreciate really how it’s not just surviving.  It’s about quality of life, and making sure that what I do in my laboratory and the therapeutics and diagnostics that we move forward are always about quality of life as well. We don’t want to put something out there that is going to make people sick more than they are from the cancer that they’re dealing with.

Alex Cumming: That’s so special. To touch back on to the young students working to cure breast cancer, everybody has maybe their own motivations and their own stories of what inspires them, but it’s also this one larger goal.

Annette Khaled: Exactly. And I think it’s important. If I could just make one more plug here. I think it’s important that as a researcher, it doesn’t matter what discipline you’re working in — whether it’s infectious disease or neuroscience, whatever field you’re in — to always connect with the people, right. Connect with individual. You know that if you’re working in disease, Alzheimer’s connect with those. You’re working with infectious disease, connect with people, HIV, because that connection really brings your research home. It really helps you focus your research on things that are going to impact people, not just something that’s your own. Like you said, ego, right? It’s something that you’re doing to do that’s going to help the community. So I really love, not just for myself but also have my students connect with breast cancer survivors for that reason.

Alex Cumming: Humanity, that the individual in that room is not patient number 52. They are, John Doe from Longwood, Florida.

Annette Khaled: Exactly.

Alex Cumming: I have a personal experience with what you’re saying. My involvement at UCF I’m with an organization called Playback UCF, which we began with our focus, it’s people tell stories and we’ll present them back through an improvised form. And we started with students and of course, young college students have a lot of feelings. They feel things very strongly, and it was very special to perform back, to get to know my cohort better. But then we transitioned and we work indefinitely with the Aphasia House here in the UCF area. And really the one-on-one experience of people who live life with aphasia it touches you in a way that you don’t expect going in. You might have an idea, but once you’ve experienced it firsthand you don’t forget.

Annette Khaled: And I think it helps, put perspective to things. It really helps you say, “Okay, maybe what I was thinking wasn’t so bad. My own little problems in my own little world, I can give perspective to them.”

Alex Cumming: It does. It’s sort of, a humbling, but not in a humbling, “Like, oh man, now I feel bad.” It’s a humbling like, “Wow, I get to wake up every day and not worry about these sorts of things.”

Annette Khaled: And in value, when these individuals are waking up every day and they’re doing their lives and their things, and really the strengths that they have I always admire that tremendously.

Alex Cumming: Seriously to go back to another point, we have hope. The students have hope, but the individuals who are living with this day to day, their hope is what I want to believe. Their hope is what inspires the hope of the younger generations to continue to work. Because when they get afflicted by it, they don’t, sit down and say, “Well, let me count down the clock.” It’s, “No, I know that somebody is working for me. There’s somebody out there who has me on their mind.”

Annette Khaled: And getting to a point you addressed earlier about your patient’s point of view and individuals’ hope and point of view, your mental wellbeing. If you have hope that whatever treatments, whatever therapy, whatever you’re going through, you have a chance of doing better because your mental wellbeing is healthy. Right?

And so that’s why it’s so critical not just to have the treatments and then whatever you’re supposed to do, your doctor tells you is critical to do, but also along those same lines, you have the hope, you have the mental wellbeing because those two together — the treatments and the mental wellbeing — is what’s going to lead to ultimately a treatment outcome, a success.

Alex Cumming: I love it. Do you have any other experiences or stories that keep yourself inspired?

Annette Khaled: Oh, there’s so many of them. I have to pick and choose.

Alex Cumming: Any highlights?

Annette Khaled: It’s really just being a survivor, and then not knowing if a cancer’s going to come back. And that’s the other big thing is — somebody tells me, “I had breast cancer 20 years ago and then it came back and now it’s metastatic. And now I have five years, survival is really bad at this point, it’s 20% or less.” So it just talking to patients who have metastatic cancer and the way that they know they have almost a death sentence on their heads and yet they still have the hope, still have that enthusiasm. I’m going to be here for my grandkids. I’m going to be here for my daughter’s wedding. So many of those stores really inspire me and say, what we do every day. What we wake up in the morning, go to the lab, go to work, go to school, whatever we’re doing, thinking of those people is really what drives a lot of that for me

Alex Cumming: Humanity, the one common that we all have, we’re all humans.

Annette Khaled: Yep. When you’re faced with a crisis like that humanity is even stronger. It comes out more.

Alex Cumming: So I want to move on to this next question of what are some of the biggest mysteries of breast cancer that we’re still trying to solve?

Annette Khaled: It comes back to what I was telling you, cancer recurrence, why after you’ve had treatment and the cancer was removed and you got all this therapy and you were given a clean bill of health — and then whammo five, 10, 20 years later, it comes back. We really do not know why, what changed. And a lot of times when it comes back, the treatments that work the first time don’t work anymore. It really is a real challenge for physicians to know what to do for these patients. So that’s one. And then the other one is the last few years immunotherapy, that’s basically taking your body’s immune system and turning it on so it can kill cancer cells, has really been an exciting new research and therapeutic direction and great successes for patients. But it doesn’t work for all patients. In fact, it works for maybe under 30% of patients. When it does work it’s amazing, it’s a cure, but why doesn’t it work for everybody? That’s the other big question. Why can’t we get this immunotherapy that has been so successful in this group of patients to work for everybody? How can a doctor know, do I give my patient immunotherapy or not?

Those are kind of the two big things for me, is that, why does cancer come back and then how do we figure out to give the patients their best treatments?

Alex Cumming: Those are both two things that are, what a wild thing to think about. So what advice would you give to somebody who wants to do what you do?

Annette Khaled: Oh, you have to have a passion for it. Doing research is not something that you can just open the door and do. I think you really have to have a passion and a love for discovery and have a thick skin that you can put up with disappointment and struggle and the negative parts of it. But always have that passion for discovery and know that those moments when you have that, “Aha, well we just discovered something really cool.” To be able to live for those moments and enjoy them. So I can say it’s a vocation almost to do research.

Alex Cumming:

Annette Khaled: Yes, endurance, lots of things that go with it — and surprisingly optimism. I think you also have to have an optimistic mind frame because if you’re pessimistic and you look always at the hole and not the donut, you’re going to struggle. I think having a little bit of optimism is always good.

Alex Cumming: Yeah. I believe that translates to most everything that people do. Is there a profession you can have where you can just be a pessimist? If you’re like a critic?

Annette Khaled: Yeah, you can be a critic. I think there’s some professions that work well with that, but I would say definitely in ours, because we have so much pessimism and there’s so much negativity sometimes associated with doing medical research that I think, every little bit of optimism you can bring to it is important.

Alex Cumming: Totally. So what’s one thing that you’re still hoping to do here at UCF, and then on a personal level?

Annette Khaled: Actually those two things are tied together. We’re building a new cancer center and this has been something that’s been in the works for now going on three years. I’m hoping to be able to be part of the process that we build our cancer center and hopefully make it a place that’s not only a place for students, a place for professors, like myself, to do research, a place for patients to come and get cutting-edge therapies. Really a place where all that’s integrated, where we really have a flow of knowledge from all these levels of students, to professors, to patients, to doctors, to everybody involved in treating a cancer patient.

So really it’s ambitious, but I do see hope one day that we can be sitting here maybe 10 years down the road and saying, “Yeah, that Lake Nona Cancer Center that’s one of the top 10 cancer centers in the country for everybody to come to.”

Alex Cumming: I’m looking forward to it. I love the sound of a place where just knowledge healing growth is all just wrapped into one, based out of here in central Florida.

Annette Khaled: And has that unique şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą culture, right? We were talking about earlier that collaborative culture that infuses our cancer system.

Alex Cumming: True that. I think everything we spoke about today can be found at UCF, the collaboration, the teamwork, the optimism, the growth for the future, the humanity, it’s all here at UCF.

So Annette, I want to say thank you so much for speaking with me today. loved our conversation. Thank you for letting me speak about my own personal experiences and for sharing your own experiences. It’s been such a pleasure to get to learn more about something that I’m aware of, I have memories of, but to dive a little deeper into it. To get a better understanding of it. So it’s been a pleasure to get to speak with you and thank you for coming on.

Annette Khaled: Well, thank you for asking me. I really enjoyed it. And I’m so happy to hear about your grandmother.

Alex Cumming: She’s still here. I’m certain she’ll love this episode.

Annette Khaled: Wish her well for me.

Alex Cumming: I certainly shall. Thank you.

Annette Khaled: Okay. Thank you. Take care.

Alex Cumming: Hey, thanks for listening. I’ll see you, you, on the next episode of the Kights Do That podcast. If you’re doing something cool, whether that’s at UCF or somewhere, you took UCF that we should know about. Send us an email socialmedia@ucf.edu, and maybe we’ll see you on an episode in the future. Go Knights and Charge On.

generously sponsored this year’s award. Each woman received a Barnes & Noble gift card.

The 2021 honorees are listed below, and more detailed bios will be updated daily on the Provost’s website during the month of March to feature each woman and her accomplishments.

Congratulations to this year’s honorees:

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine

Nursing Practice,ĚýCollege of Nursing

School of Social Work, College of Health Professions and Sciences

Research Associate Professor and Core Scientist
Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine

Assistant Professor
Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Senior Lecturer and Undergraduate Program Director
Physics, College of Sciences

Anthropology, College of Sciences

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine

School of Teacher Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

School of Performing Arts, College of Arts and Humanities

Counselor Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

Criminal Justice, College of Community Innovation and Education

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine

School of Teacher Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

Anthropology, College of Sciences

Biology, College of Sciences

History, College of Arts and Humanities

School of Teacher Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

Educational Leadership, College of Community Innovation and Education

Psychology, College of Sciences

Nursing Systems, College of Nursing

Foodservice and Lodging Management, Rosen College of Hospitality Management

School of Teacher Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

Florida Space Institute and Arecibo Observatory, College of Sciences

Modern Languages and Literatures, College of Arts and Humanities

English, College of Arts and Humanities

Learning Sciences and Educational Research, College of Community Innovation and Education

Center for Distributed Learning

School of Teacher Education, College of Community Innovation and Education

College of Medicine

Computer Science, College of Engineering and Computer Science

After six years of researching metastatic breast cancer at UCF, she was ready to present her dissertation defense — the process where Ph.D. candidates must explain and answer questions about their research to earn their graduate degrees. But, like many doctoral candidates across the country and university, Showalter’s plans changed with COVID-19.

Instead of speaking face-to-face to a room full of peers and faculty, she lectured from an empty room to a computer screen.

Her mentor, Annette Khaled, head of UCF’s Cancer Research Division, says that as the date for Showalter’s dissertation defense neared, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, making social distancing the new norm.

“It became clear that we had to come up with an alternative plan, so Anne had two weeks to really put this together,” Khaled says.

Instead of being able to interact and highlight her PowerPoint presentation in-person on a large screen, Showalter had to practice how and when to refer to it online. She had to decide when to be onscreen so the audience could see her. She couldn’t move around the room or engage with the audience. She had to remain seated to stay in view of the webcam.

Presenting from home had other problems. “I was worried about the equipment and if everyone could hear me and whether my dog would bark or cat would walk over the keyboard,” Showalter says.

More than 30 family members, peers and faculty joined her recent video dissertation defense. Showalter couldn’t see everyone’s faces. She couldn’t glance around the room for reassuring nods or to gauge the listeners’ interest and understanding. The good news, though, was distant family and friends who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend the dissertation were able to log-in to the virtual version.

“My parents, brothers and grandmother could see my work,” says Showalter. Did they understand her research? “Oh not at all,” she laughs.

Dozens of UCF doctoral candidates are going through the same online process.

Justine Tigno-Aranjuez, assistant professor of biomedical sciences, who was on Showalter’s dissertation committee, also had Ph.D. student Mike Shehat present his work virtually. Shehat’s dissertation was on broadening the use of RIP2 protein therapies to treat inflammatory diseases.

Tigno-Aranjuez says she was nervous for both students. Dissertation defenses culminate years of research and as a faculty mentor, she was not physically there to offer support for the hour-long presentations.

“This is the time for students to shine because public speaking is really part of the program,” she says. “But it’s not the same as having a live audience, as it’s not as interactive.”

Even their after-dissertation celebrations are different. During this time of social distancing, instead of being able to celebrate with a large group of friends, Showalter said she stayed home and baked a cake to share with her spouse. She and Shehat said they will gather with friends and colleagues in person later in the summer.

Both Ph.D. candidates passed their oral defenses. Showalter has a teaching job lined up at Southern Arkansas şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą after graduation. Shehat will continue at UCF as a post-doc and work with Travis Jewitt on chlamydia research.

Tigno-Aranjuez praises the students for adapting to a new format in today’s COVID-19 environment.

“It’s the best we could do for our situation and it worked,” she says. “It’s wonderful to see them grow as scientists. I couldn’t be prouder.”

A discovery at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą College of Medicine may in the future help detect cancer cells in patients before these cells have a chance to metastasize or spread through the body.

Annette Khaled, a UCF professor and cancer researcher who has spent the last eight years studying ways to inhibit breast cancer metastases, published her lab’s results in last month’s Scientific Reports.

Khaled leads the medical school’s cancer research division and is looking at how and why cells escape the primary cancer tumor and then spread to organs like the lungs, brain and bones, where they cause 90 percent of cancer deaths.

Supported with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, she previously was able to show that a molecular complex called a chaperonin (or CCT for short) — which helps proteins to fold into functional units — is especially active in cancer cells.

Her team developed a peptide to blocks the folding mechanism and placed it in a nanoparticle to deliver straight to cancer cells. Without the ability to have their proteins fold, the cancer cells died.

Khaled knew her nanoparticle was disabling the folding system but didn’t know how. Complicating that understanding was the fact that the CCT complex is a giant cellular machine and made up of eight different subunits.

In her latest study, Khaled discovered how the cancer killing happened.

She discovered that one of the subunits — “Subunit 2” — is the leader that makes the whole cellular system work.

“Adding Subunit 2 can make normal cells act like cancer cells,” she says. “Subunit 2 leads and the others follow.”

Defining Subunit 2’s role took months of study. The UCF scientist discovered that adding more Subunit 2 caused cancer cells to grow and move. Depleting the subunit caused cancer cells to ultimately die.

“Understanding cancer is like trying to solve a giant jigsaw puzzle,” Khaled explains. “And with this discovery, we feel like we’ve found some of the parts that make up the puzzle’s edge. We all have a little Subunit 2 in our cells and our levels go up and down based on demands for protein-folding. But in cancer cells that need to grow and invade, Subunit 2 seems to be on all the time.

“Based on our new research, we can work to discover markers that identify cancer cells in which Subunit 2 is increasing, making these cells susceptible to our nanomedicine.”

The next phase of Khaled’s Subunit 2 research was advanced by gifts from the Catherine McCaw-Engelman and Family Cancer Research Collaborative and the Hardee Family Foundation.  Based on her latest findings in Scientific Reports, Khaled is next turning to detecting circulating cancer cells in blood with high levels of Subunit 2. Such testing could give physicians another indicator of whether the patient’s cancer is spreading.

“What I want to do is get these guys,” Khaled says of her work to stop spreading cancer cells. “With this study, we are one step closer.”

The groups come together to issue annual rankings as a way to highlight the important role universities play in discovery and bringing inventions to the market where people can benefit from the research conducted around the world. The 2018 rankings were calculated using the number of utility patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. For patents assigned to more than one entity, credit is given to the first named entity.

UCF ranked 75^th with 32 patents. Another eight patents were secured with partners and were not included in the calculation. UCF has ranked in the top 100 for the past five years.

The top university in the world was the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of California, which secured 526 patents, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with 304 and Stanford şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą with 226. The şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of South Florida, şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Florida and Florida State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą also made the list.

“Researchers develop solutions every day at UCF.” — Svetlana Shtrom ’08MBA, director of UCF’s Technology Transfer Office

The research that led to UCF’s 32 patents covers everything from new technology developed to enhance science-education delivery, to newly developed synthetic materials aimed at protecting citrus from disease and keeping wood, ceramics and fibers protected against bacteria and fungus.

“Researchers develop solutions every day at UCF,” says Svetlana Shtrom ’08MBA, director of UCF’s Technology Transfer Office, which is responsible for securing patents based on innovative university research. “Protecting inventions is critical to incentivize partnerships to transform promising research results into products that benefit the society by improving public health and well-being.”

Among some of the inventions that led to patents in 2018:

Citrus Greening Fighter

Lead researcher: Swadeshmukul Santra, NanoScience Technology Center

A new non-phytotoxic composite polymer film barrier as a repellent to protect citrus crops from Asian citrus psyllid, an insect known to carry the bacteria that cause Huanglongbing (HLB), or citrus greening disease. The process involves a uniform application of the film material onto the plants, which creates a barrier that prevents HLB transmission.

Protecting Woods and Ceramics

Lead researchers: Joshua Bazata ’12 ’15MS and Swadeshmukul Santra, NanoScience Technology Center

A new silver-based nanocomposite material that provides the antimicrobial benefits of silver without discoloring or staining surfaces. The clear, colorless, non-toxic material enables manufacturers to produce coatings and disinfectants that can protect wood, plastic, metal, ceramic and fabric against bacteria, fungi and other harmful microbes.

Illicit Drug Detector

Lead researcher: Richard Blair, invention developed while based at the NanoScience Technology Center

A new portable device that easily detects the presence of drugs. A sample suspected of containing illicit drugs can be placed on a test paper and then analyzed through a portable spectrometer, which generates a unique optical spectrum of each drug. These results can easily be read via smart phone or other mobile computing device through an application, which ensures proper and rapid reading of results and provides confirmation of whether illicit drugs are present.  The Office of Technology Transfer is in the final stages of discussions with a start-up company to license and commercialize this technology.

Cancer-Killing Agent

Lead researcher: Annette Khaled, College of Medicine

This patent describes a biological agent that can be used to kill cancer cells, bacterial cells and other microbial cells. The biological agent includes a small special protein (a peptide) that is encapsulated in a nanoparticle. The nanoparticle protects the peptide and enables delivery of the peptide to the target cells. Once delivered, the peptide ruptures the membranes (protective covering) of cells, causing the cells to die. This peptide can be used as a therapeutic agent to destroy cancer cells, as well as harmful bacteria and fungi. This technology is licensed to a start-up company.

3D Organ Replicator

Lead researcher: Jack Stubbs, Institute for Simulation and Training

The invention allows a user to create 3D-printed replicas of objects that mimic the varied physical properties of the original objects. Applications include the ability to print models of human organs, such as the skin, incorporating complex materials to generate more realistic models.

Bad-Fat Imager

Lead researcher: Ulas Bagci, Center for Research in Computer Vision

The invention is the first automated system to provide accurate, quantitative data regarding a person’s white and brown body fat (adipose tissue) levels. The innovation enables clinicians to better assess possible health issues and risks associated with abdominal obesity, one of the most prevalent health conditions today. Using imaging scans and a novel computerized automatic detection system, the invention provides the distribution of a person’s white adipose tissue and brown adipose tissue at the whole body, body region and organ levels.

NanoMetal Armor

Lead researcher: Linan An, Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center

This invention is a unique and simple process that can be used to produce metal powders with significantly improved mechanical properties. This technique results in embedding ceramic nanoparticles into metal flakes. This process can be utilized in the production of airplane structures, vehicle armor and automobiles.

STEM Education Platform

Lead researcher: Issa Batarseh, College of Engineering and Computer Science

Three patents were filed for a system collectively known as the “Electronic Book Operating System (eBOS).” The eBOS is an interactive, collaborative, real-time, and web-based multimedia learning environment. This educational innovation is supported by effective educational methodology that significantly improves the learning capacity of students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curricula. The eBOS looks and functions like a printed book through flipped pages, bookmarks, highlighting, and notes, and it can bring images, symbolic equations, and other instructional elements to life. The material can be adapted for difficulty levels, learning statistics can be tracked, and modules are included to improve teacher-student interaction. Eexamples of these modules include QuizMe, TutorMe, LectureMe, ShowMeDesign and Practical Relevance). It is hardware independent, cross-platform capable, and offers a flexible operating system for the “technical books of the future.”  This technology is licensed to a start-up company.

And at a pre-game press conference Dec. 15, Khaled and football players from Tulane şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą and Louisiana-Lafayette talked about the impact of breast cancer, which will kill more than 40,000 Americans this year.

Zachery Harris, linebacker for Tulane, said his grandmother died from breast cancer a year ago.  “So it’s very dear to me,” he told reporters about playing in the Cure Bowl. “Just to be playing for that cause means a whole lot.”

The annual NCAA bowl game in Orlando raises money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF), the largest private funder of breast cancer research worldwide. One of the game’s largest beneficiaries is Khaled,.  “The work that we’re doing right now at UCF is really mostly due to the Cure Bowl’s endeavors,” she said.

In 2012, Khaled discovered a peptide called CT20 that kills metastatic cancer cells. The peptide disrupts chaperonin, a protein that prompts the folding mechanism inside cancer cells. If the inner workings of the cell can’t fold into 3D units, the cell dies. She and her team developed a technology using nanoparticles that are programmed to carry the peptide through the bloodstream to attack metastatic cancer cells. And recently, her lab has been working with “liquid biopsies,” which can analyze spreading cancer cells in patients’ blood to help identify those whose tumor makeup would most benefit from their therapy.

“A lot of people are developing therapies for all different types of cancer, including breast cancer,” Khaled says. “But the challenge comes when you try to use that therapy in patients. Which patients will benefit? Which therapy should you use on which patient? So being able to develop a diagnostic arm that runs in parallel to our therapy is really powerful.”

Khaled said the Cure Bowl funding and support from BCRF have accelerated her work to find a cure while helping raise public awareness about her research.  “We’re moving forward,” she says.

The Cure Bowl begins at 1:30 p.m. at Camping World Stadium. Tickets are on sale at https://fevo.me/2O0c0P4.