Suzie Chen '73

It was at Columbia that Chen began experimenting with a line of transgenic mice that display a tendency to develop malignant melanoma. She inserted foreign DNA into fertilized mouse eggs, unsure of the outcome. “In science, your hypothesis is wrong about 99 percent of the time,” she says. Four of the pups that were produced in the experiment were completely normal, but the fifth mouse pup developed melanoma, and the tendency for the disease was passed on to other animals in the germ line. “I knew I had to continue this cancer research because of what I had found. It is a powerful model for studying melanoma,” says Chen.

Melanoma is a scary disease. According to a report from the National Cancer Institute, the incidence rate of malignant melanoma has more than doubled in the past 20 years in the United States. “The most deadly form occurs in places that are not exposed to the sun,” says Chen. The cancer often spreads to other areas in the body, and it is not generally responsive to chemotherapy, she says.

In 1992 when she left Columbia for a position at Rutgers, Chen took her research with her. She discovered that melanoma cells produce an excess of glutamate, a cellular growth factor. An overproduction of glutamate is the suspected culprit in ALS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, says Chen. “The neurons can die because they are over-stimulated by too much glutamate.”

Riluzole, a drug used for ALS, appears to shut off glutamate release, thus slowing tumor growth in laboratory experiments using cultures of human melanoma cells. The drug has a similar effect in Chen’s transgenic mice.
Recently, Chen collaborated with James Goydos, a surgical oncologist with The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, in clinical trials using riluzole on a small group of late-stage melanoma patients. Sixty-percent of the patients showed a positive response. “It’s better than anything out there today,” says Chen. Future trials are in the planning stages. “You can’t translate from animal trials to treating humans with 100-percent success, but these results are very exciting,” she says.

“Someone gave me a chance when I was young”

In addition to research and writing grant proposals and papers, Chen gives five lectures each year to undergraduates and team-teaches in several graduate courses. She supervises close to a dozen students—undergraduates, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows—at any given time and mentors high-school students each summer. “Someone gave me a chance when I was young,” she says, referring to Galbraith and her years in the lab at Yale. “This is my opportunity to inspire students and repay society.”

Chen has a “pretty good record” for inspiring students. Of the 300 to 400 undergraduates she’s mentored over the years, all are in medical or graduate school. And she is particularly sensitive to the struggles of her female graduate students. “Being a woman scientist can be very unforgiving,” says Chen. “If you take time off for a sick child, no one will take you seriously.”

But Chen seems to thrive on the fast pace of her life. “If I’m not busy, I’m edgy,” she says. Up at 5:00 a.m., she works out at the gym and then has breakfast with her husband of 31 years, Leigh Wise. She’s at her office by 8:00 a.m. and usually puts in 12-hour days. “My friends say I’m never going to retire. It’s not in my nature,” she says. But learning how to relax is definitely on her to-do list. “Someday, I might even sit on a beach and read a trashy novel!”

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