Date of Completion

2017

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Biology

Thesis Type

Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors

First Advisor

Eugene Delay, Ph.D.

Keywords

taste, cyclophosphamide, amifostine, taste cell replacement

Abstract

Cyclophosphamide (CYP) is a nonspecific chemotherapeutic drug that negatively disrupts the mammalian taste system. In order to alleviate this disruption, amifostine (AMF), a protective agent, can be administered prior to the introduction of CYP. This study aimed to test for the relative safety of AMF in prolonged exposure with fractionated doses of CYP, which has not been previously conducted in taste epithelium. These effects were studied using selected four and ten-day post-injection time points, where the most significant decrease in taste cell detection thresholds and cell populations had been established in previous studies. One treatment group was injected with a dose of AMF each day over a course of five days and one group was injected with a dose of AMF and CYP each day over a course of five days. Taste cell populations were tracked and compared to control groups using several immunohistochemical markers: Ki67 tagged proliferative cells, PLCβ2 labeled Type II taste cells, and SNAP25 labeled Type III taste cells. Results suggest that there is no significant difference between groups receiving prolonged doses of AMF compared to saline control. In addition, groups receiving AMF prior to fractionated doses of CYP showed significant protection of basal and mature taste cell populations in the circumvallate papillae of the tongue. Information that indicates no change in taste cell populations could elect to be paired with a dose-dense treatment regimen of chemotherapy, with no added toxicity as a byproduct of administration.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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