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A researcher in Algoma University’s School of Life Sciences and the Environment has received a prestigious $162,500 grant to further her research in cancer biology. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded a Discovery grant to Dr. Nirosha Murugan for her research program Biophysical Control of Tissue Re-Programming. Murugan’s research aims to understand how cells communicate with each other in order to be able to prevent or stop cancer cells from developing. “In the biological world, cells are constantly talking to each other,” Murugan explained to Sault This Week. “The way that they communicate is most commonly thought of as through exchanging molecules. These molecules tell the cell to divide, to move, and what they should be (e.g., a heart cell, a brain cell) or what shape the cells should take. The biomolecules that tell cells to form certain shapes are called morphogens.”