Raymond DuBois Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
Walter Chazin, Ph.D.
Two Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists, Raymond N. DuBois Jr., M.D., Ph.D., and Walter J. Chazin, Ph.D., have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon them by their peers.
They are among 308 scientists from around the country who have been elevated to this rank because of their efforts to advance science or its applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.
New fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin on Saturday, Feb. 19, at the 2005 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Chazin was cited for "his important contributions to the chemistry and structural biology of proteins." He is the director of the Center for Structural Biology and Chancellor's Professor of Biochemistry and Physics. A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrography expert, he was recruited in 1999 to build Vanderbilt's NMR presence in the context of a more comprehensive structural biology center.
The Chazin laboratory has made significant progress in working out the underlying basis for the concerted action of multiple proteins that gather together to read the information in human genomes and help maintain their accuracy. He and his colleagues are applying the basic approach that they developed for this purpose to study defects in proteins that lead to specific cancers, cardiac arrhythmias and diabetes-induced atherosclerosis.
DuBois, poised to become director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, was cited for "outstanding contributions to the field of cancer protection and digestive disease research and for the discovery of the role of the cyclooxygenase-2 enzyme in colorectal carcinogenesis." DuBois, Mina Cobb Wallace Professor of Gastroenterology and Cancer Prevention, is recognized internationally for his groundbreaking contributions toward understanding the role of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in cancer and the potential for COX-2 inhibition in preventing and treating cancers.
The AAAS, founded in 1848, is the world’s largest federation of scientists. With more than 143,000 individual members and 276 affiliated societies, the association works to advance science for human wellbeing through its projects, programs and publications.