Newswise — The Cancer Research Institute, a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to advancing immunology to conquer cancer, announced that the Fellowship Review Committee of the Institute's Scientific Advisory Council, with the approval of the Institute's Board of Trustees, has named 16 new postdoctoral fellows from its April 2008 application round, awarding more than $2.3 million in research funding through the Irvington Institute Fellowship Program of the Cancer Research Institute.
The 16 young research scientists are conducting basic and tumor immunology laboratory investigations under the guidance of leading immunologists and tumor immunologists at distinguished academic institutions throughout the United States, including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University School of Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the University of Washington, and Yale University, among others. Since the fellowship program's inception in 1971, 926 fellows have received valuable funding from the Cancer Research Institute. Many fellows have since gone on to become leaders in their field, including two who have won the Nobel Prize.
Cancer Research Institute Postdoctoral Fellows Awarded in June 2008
"¢ Amanda L. Blasius, Ph.D., with her sponsor Bruce Beutler, M.D., at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, is identifying and characterizing novel genes in a unique pathway that fight viral infection with signaling proteins called type I interferons. Further understanding of the type I interferon response may identify new therapeutic targets for treating a wide variety of viral and bacterial infection, tumorigenesis, and autoimmunity.
"¢ André Catic, M.D., Ph.D., with his sponsor David T. Scadden, M.D., at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, is comparing the ability of hematopoietic stem cells to create immune system-defending lymphocytic blood cells during the course of aging. The outcome of this work will not only tell us more about how blood-forming stem cells operate over time, but also about the nature of stem cells in general, including those giving rise to cancers.
"¢ Kaushik Choudhuri, DPhil, with his sponsor Michael L. Dustin, Ph.D., at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, New York, New York, is providing a detailed view of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the induction, assembly, and signaling of T-cell receptor (TCR) microclusters that lead to appropriate cellular activation and immune response. This research will provide a better mechanistic understanding of T-cell activation and the means to construct predictive models for T-cell activation.
"¢ Stephanie K. Dougan, Ph.D., with her sponsor Hidde L. Ploegh, Ph.D., at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is devising a new strategy for generating cytotoxic T cells, in charge of destroying infected cells, by defining the role of B cells in cytotoxic T-cell response. If B cells can activate cytotoxic T cells, then this pathway could be used to design new therapeutic tumor vaccines for humans.
"¢ Etienne Gagnon, Ph.D., with his sponsor Kai Wucherpfennig, M.D., Ph.D., at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, is investigating how signals are transmitted across the T-cell membrane to cytoplasmic signaling motifs and how binding strength is regulated. Definition of these mechanisms may enable modulation of T-cell signaling thresholds during cancer immunotherapy.
"¢ Stacy M. Horner, Ph.D., with her sponsor Michael J. Gale Jr., Ph.D., at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, is isolating the mechanisms of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and disease, which infects approximately 170 million people worldwide, typically for life. Insights into how HCV controls the innate immune response during infection may lead to new strategies to reactivate the innate immune response upon HCV infection and, thus, reduce the incidence of HCV-associated liver cancer.
"¢ Da Jia, Ph.D., with his sponsor Michael K. Rosen, Ph.D., at the UT Southern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, is examining the role of Ezh2, a protein that causes mutations, in T-cell binding affinity to harmful pathogens. Over-expression of Ezh2 is associated with a variety of cancers and understanding T-cell signaling is critical in the development of anti-cancer therapies that seek to manipulate T-cell responses to cancer.
"¢ Shari M. Kaiser, Ph.D., with her sponsor Adrian Ozinsky, M.D., Ph.D., at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, Washington, is exploiting the simple genetics of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (H5N1) associated with "bird flu," to identify and characterize cellular targets of the viral proteins known to affect immune sensors and effectors. These key regulators will also be critical to the complex role of inflammation in cancer progression.
"¢ Prashant Kodgire, Ph.D., with his sponsor Ursula Storb, M.D., at The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, is determining how antibody genes are created with the potential to react against any foreign pathogen by studying a process called somatic hypermutation (SHM). Because SHM aids in the defense against tumors, a better grasp of the process will help depict causes of B-lymphocyte malignancies and influence the production of high affinity antibodies against infectious agents and tumors.
"¢ Blythe Duke Sather, Ph.D., with her sponsor David J. Rawlings, M.D., at the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, is attempting to delineate a protein called PKC-beta and its downstream components' contributions to a type of blood cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Her studies may lead to new therapeutic targets to treat DLBCL patients who do not respond to current treatments.
"¢ Isabel Scholz, Ph.D., with her sponsor Klaus Früh, Ph.D., at the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, Oregon Health and Sciences University, Beaverton, Oregon, has discovered a completely novel mechanism used by rhesus cytomegalovirus to interfere with normal immune system signaling and to hide from immune recognition. Determining the exact molecular mechanism will contribute to knowledge about how malignant cells interfere with antigen expression and thereby evade destruction by the immune system.
"¢ Rashu Bhargava Seth, Ph.D., with her sponsor David G. Schatz, Ph.D., at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, is studying DNA repair pathways that both cause and correct gene mutations that are beneficial to creating antibodies, but sometimes harmful to non-antibody genes. The results of this experiment will address the possibility that a break-down in the repair pathways involved in somatic hypermutation (SHM), a mutation-introducing process, leads to disease conditions like cancer.
"¢ Selvakumar Sukumar, Ph.D., with his sponsor Mark S. Schlissel, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, is investigating a gene encoding process termed V(D)J recombination that creates receptors to help B cells recognize and destroy microbes. Defective regulation of V(D)J recombination results in chromosomal translocations, which are a major cause of leukemias and lymphomas.
"¢ Tim Willinger, M.D., Ph.D., with his sponsor Richard A. Flavell, Ph.D., at the Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, has identified a protein called dynamin 2 as very likely to be essential to T-cell homeostasis and T-cell trafficking throughout the body. The absence of dynamin 2 leads to a dramatic reduction in T cells and abnormal distribution of T cells within the body, an observation that is highly relevant for the development of immunotherapies against infectious diseases and cancer.
"¢ Erbay Yigit, Ph.D., with her sponsor Jonathan Widom, Ph.D., at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, is investigating how the location of nucleosomes (DNA packaging units) controls the access DNA binding proteins have to their target sites. Dr. Yigit's studies will provide insight into the exact mechanism of how DNA binding proteins regulate the expression of their target genes and influence cancer cell development and immune cell differentiation.
"¢ Matthew J. Youngman, Ph.D., with his sponsor Dennis H. Kim, M.D., Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is studying age-associated factors involved in the decline in immune function later in life by observing the immune system of the roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans. During old age, innate immune dysfunction can lead to chronic inflammation, which has been associated with the development of several types of cancer.
The Cancer Research Institute extends its congratulations to this latest group of postdoctoral fellows. The next deadline for application to the Institute's fellowship program is October 1, 2008.
About the Cancer Research InstituteThe Cancer Research Institute (CRI) is the world's only non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to the support and coordination of scientific and clinical efforts that will lead to the immunological treatment, control, and prevention of cancer. Guided by a world-renowned Scientific Advisory Council that includes five Nobel Prize winners and thirty members of the National Academy of Sciences, CRI supports cutting-edge cancer research at top medical centers and universities throughout the world. The Cancer Research Institute is ushering in a new era of scientific progress, hastening the discovery of effective cancer vaccines and other immune-based therapies that are providing new hope to cancer patients.
The Cancer Research Institute has one of the lowest overhead expense ratios among non-profit organizations, with the majority of its resources going directly to the support of its science, medical, and research programs. This has consistently earned CRI an A grade or higher for fiscal disclosure and efficiency from the American Institute of Philanthropy and top marks from other charity watchdog organizations. http://www.cancerresearch.org
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