Roel Nusse, Ph.D., an expert in the regulation of tissue growth and development by Wnt signaling pathways, will deliver the next Flexner Discovery Lecture on Thursday, April 23.
Nusse is the CDB Distinguished Speaker. His lecture, “Wnt Signaling, Stem Cell Control and Cancer,” sponsored by the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, will begin at 4 p.m. in 208 Light Hall.
Nusse is the Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research at Stanford University School of Medicine and a member of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.
He discovered the Wnt1 gene in 1982 during his postdoctoral research training in the laboratory of Harold Varmus, M.D., at the University of California, San Francisco. The Wnt1 gene was the first member of a large gene family, which now has 19 members.
Subsequent discoveries by Nusse and others have demonstrated that Wnt signaling pathways regulate cell decisions during embryonic development and influence how stem cells divide. Aberrant Wnt signaling — because of mutations in Wnt signaling components — is implicated in cancer.
Nusse is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the Peter Debeye Prize from the University of Maastricht in 2000.
For a complete schedule of the Flexner Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.