What do you think are some reasons that your positive control results had such a high percent survival? (assuming the expected outcome of the positive control should have been zero percent survival)
The non-zero percent survival for our positive control probably resulted from the fact that because so little flies survive to adulthood when treated with the positive control, the rare surviving fly makes a big percentage survival if there are only 2 pupa cases on the walls. If even one of those cases end up hatching a fly, then the survival rate is now 50%.
Can you explain more on what an efflux pump inhibitor is and why it would be significant in chemotherapy? Why did you choose the colchicine as the chemotherapy to study?
An efflux pump inhibitor is any molecule that prevents certain pumps from performing their regular function of removing substances from the interior of the cell. These efflux pump inhibitors are significant in chemotherapy because they act as a useful tool when you want a toxic drug to build up inside of cells. By inhibiting efflux pumps, you remove one tool that cancer cells sometimes use to avoid a buildup of toxic things inside the cell. Colchicine was used in this experiment because it is a known toxic compound that will kill cancer cells, and our positive control has to do that.
Because the data suggests that there is an additive effect when Myricetin and Colchicine are combined, I think the only reason why we didn’t get a hit is because we didn’t test all possible combinations of dosages of Myricetin and Colchicine. If we had more time, I think we would’ve gotten a hit by performing and testing more dilution series of each compound.
Why do you think your Colchicine Myricetin mixture that was 0.5:0.5 had such a higher error bar range? It appears to be statistically much larger than that of the others. Was this a contaminated sample or is an equimolar dilution show some promising results?
This large error bar was probably due to the fact that we could only test a limited number of vials for each dosage, as we didn’t have enough time to do more. Those error bars would shrink if we had more samples. As to why that particular error bar is so large, it could be that one of the vials was contaminated somehow, resulting in a drastically different survival rate.
Why do you think your equimolar Colchicine to Myricetin (0.5:0.5) had such a large error bar associated with it? Do you think the sample was contaminated, or do you believe there could be some interesting statistical relationship there?
How probable do you think alternative treatments to cancer could be in the future? Also, do you think you could create a viable solution to meet that threshold with your dilutions if you had more time?
I think that in the future, we will have far more effective and safe cancer treatments just based on the progress we’ve made in recent decades. I do think that we could meet the hit threshold if we had more time to test more dilutions. Our data already suggests that combining Myricetin and Colchicine results in a lower survival than just colchicine alone. This suggest that we could optimize the dosages and perhaps get a hit.
What do you think are some reasons that your positive control results had such a high percent survival? (assuming the expected outcome of the positive control should have been zero percent survival)
The non-zero percent survival for our positive control probably resulted from the fact that because so little flies survive to adulthood when treated with the positive control, the rare surviving fly makes a big percentage survival if there are only 2 pupa cases on the walls. If even one of those cases end up hatching a fly, then the survival rate is now 50%.
Can you explain more on what an efflux pump inhibitor is and why it would be significant in chemotherapy? Why did you choose the colchicine as the chemotherapy to study?
An efflux pump inhibitor is any molecule that prevents certain pumps from performing their regular function of removing substances from the interior of the cell. These efflux pump inhibitors are significant in chemotherapy because they act as a useful tool when you want a toxic drug to build up inside of cells. By inhibiting efflux pumps, you remove one tool that cancer cells sometimes use to avoid a buildup of toxic things inside the cell. Colchicine was used in this experiment because it is a known toxic compound that will kill cancer cells, and our positive control has to do that.
Why do you think your data did not get a hit?
Because the data suggests that there is an additive effect when Myricetin and Colchicine are combined, I think the only reason why we didn’t get a hit is because we didn’t test all possible combinations of dosages of Myricetin and Colchicine. If we had more time, I think we would’ve gotten a hit by performing and testing more dilution series of each compound.
Why do you think your Colchicine Myricetin mixture that was 0.5:0.5 had such a higher error bar range? It appears to be statistically much larger than that of the others. Was this a contaminated sample or is an equimolar dilution show some promising results?
This large error bar was probably due to the fact that we could only test a limited number of vials for each dosage, as we didn’t have enough time to do more. Those error bars would shrink if we had more samples. As to why that particular error bar is so large, it could be that one of the vials was contaminated somehow, resulting in a drastically different survival rate.
Why do you think your equimolar Colchicine to Myricetin (0.5:0.5) had such a large error bar associated with it? Do you think the sample was contaminated, or do you believe there could be some interesting statistical relationship there?
This question appears to be a repeat of the last one!
How probable do you think alternative treatments to cancer could be in the future? Also, do you think you could create a viable solution to meet that threshold with your dilutions if you had more time?
I think that in the future, we will have far more effective and safe cancer treatments just based on the progress we’ve made in recent decades. I do think that we could meet the hit threshold if we had more time to test more dilutions. Our data already suggests that combining Myricetin and Colchicine results in a lower survival than just colchicine alone. This suggest that we could optimize the dosages and perhaps get a hit.