Bold claim: cancer research begins where it matters most—at the cellular level, where tiny changes can reshape the entire disease. For Samantha Pattenden, that focus is deeply personal. As an undergraduate, she watched her grandfather grapple with colon cancer and confusion about his treatment, calling her for explanations: “These are the drugs they are giving me. What are they?” That moment sparked a commitment to understand how cancer therapies work and how to improve them. Her own breast cancer journey later gave her researchers a patient’s lens to guide her inquiries.
Today, Pattenden serves as an associate professor in the division of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. A PhD graduate of the University of Toronto, she carried out postdoctoral work at both the Stowers Institute in Kansas City and UNC Eshelman. Her laboratory centers on chromatin biology, highlighting its pivotal role in cancer.
Chromatin — the structure that packages DNA inside the cell nucleus — must open to read DNA. Pattenden explains that these openings often define a cancer cell’s identity and fuel its growth. Her lab is tackling some of the toughest pediatric oncology challenges through two major projects.
One line of investigation targets Ewing sarcoma, a cancer of bone and soft tissue that affects children and young adults. In collaboration with Dr. Ian Davis, chief of pediatric hematology-oncology at UNC Children’s Research Institute, the team sought compounds that could counteract an abnormal protein that aberrantly opens chromatin and activates gene programs driving tumor growth. They designed an assay to specifically block that chromatin-opening activity.
With backing from the National Cancer Institute’s Experimental Therapeutics program, the team screened more than 120,000 compounds. After three years in the NExT program and more than 15 years of dedicated Carolina research, they are narrowing down candidates that could eventually proceed to clinical testing.
Pattenden emphasizes that the work peers down to the molecular mechanism, focusing on the cellular level. “Success means discovering a new target or a novel way to disrupt a key tumor cell pathway,” she notes.
A second major effort targets pediatric cancers known for their aggressiveness: osteosarcoma, which starts in bone-forming cells, and neuroblastoma, which originates in immature nerve cells.
Collaboration sits at the heart of these endeavors. Pattenden describes teamwork with pediatric oncologists, chemists, and engineers as essential to making progress.
Ultimately, the motivation returns to patients. Cancer comprises many diseases, each demanding fresh ideas and new tools. Pattenden underscores the complexity: cancer isn’t a single entity but a spectrum of conditions requiring targeted strategies. The goal is to identify a target that a small molecule can modulate to attack cancer cells while sparing normal cells.
Read more about Pattenden’s research at UNC’s pharmacy page.
