Ardoña Wins Funding from UCI’s 2025 Anti-Cancer Challenge 

July 9, 2025 - Chemical and biomolecular engineering Assistant Professor Herdeline Ardoña is researching how chemotherapy affects the heart health of people with cancer.  

Ardoña explains that advancements in chemotherapy drugs have helped raise the survival rates of cancer patients in recent years, but many could suffer from life-threatening cardiovascular risks from these drugs. This current research endeavor in Ardoña’s group will identify these damaging effects early in the drug development process. 

The UC Irvine Anti-Cancer Challenge gave her $40,000 in seed funding for her work. Ardoña is one of 24 researchers awarded for their pilot projects. 

By using patient-specific 3D cardiac models and human stem cells scaffolded in a network of stimuli-responsive polymers, Ardoña plans to study exactly how chemotherapy drugs affect the heart. The models will be built with individual patient characteristics like age, sex and race in mind. By comparing these 3D models with 2D versions, Ardoña’s research will provide a better understanding of how the anti-cancer drugs cause heart damage, giving clinicians important and valuable insights into prevention and treatment of heart problems in cancer patients. 

The UCI Anti-Cancer Challenge is a nonprofit organization established in 2017 to bring the university community together to raise funds and awareness for cancer research. One hundred percent of the funds raised go toward promising pilot studies and early phase clinical trials. Since its inception, this challenge has raised more than $6.2 million for cancer research. 

– Cassandra Nava