November 11, 2010

Tenth anniversary for Cancer Biology

Tenth anniversary for Cancer Biology

The Department of Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Thursday, Nov. 18, with a scientific symposium from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in 898-B PRB.

The keynote speaker is Zena Werb, Ph.D., vice chair of Anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco. Her talk, entitled, “Of mice and women — how studying breast development informs us about breast cancer,” will begin at 12:10 p.m.

The other speakers, all of whom earned their Ph.D.s or did postdoctoral work in cancer biology at Vanderbilt, are:

Brian Bierie, Ph.D., Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research;
Nikki Cheng, Ph.D., University of Kansas School of Medicine;
Howard Crawford, Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook;
Michael Davis, Ph.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center;
Tracy Vargo-Gogola, Ph.D., Indiana School of Medicine-South Bend; and
Li Yang, Ph.D., National Cancer Institute.

The Department of Cancer Biology was established in April 2000 with five faculty members, including its founding and current chair, Lynn Matrisian, Ph.D.

The department now includes 28 primary and research faculty members and more than 50 others with secondary appointments in Cancer Biology, 59 graduate students and 13 post-doctoral fellows.

Research in the department focuses on microenvironmental influences on cellular behavior, particularly as they are related to host-tumor interactions.

Lunches are available on a first come, first served basis. For more information, contact Barbara Fingleton, Ph.D., at 936-5877 or barbara.fingleton@vanderbilt.edu.