Jelena Nedjic, PhD, with her sponsor Iannis Aifantis, PhD, at the New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, aims to understand the role of molecules that regulate cellular migration and adhesion during the development and metastasis of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), a blood cancer arising from transformed immune cells. The progression of the disease leads to severe metastasis to the central nervous system.
Duncan J. Smith, PhD, [HHMI Fellow] with his sponsor Iestyn Whitehouse, PhD, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, is investigating how the higher-order structure of DNA is accurately transmitted when cells divide. Defects in this process are likely to play a role in the early stages of oncogenesis by giving rise to inappropriate gene expression.
Sabrina L. Spencer, PhD, with her sponsor Tobias Meyer, PhD, at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, is studying the cellular decision to proliferate or remain in a non-dividing state. Using fluorescence time-lapse microscopy and mathematical modeling, she is working to extend our current understanding of this cellular decision and its deregulation in cancer.
Robin Evans Stanley, PhD, with her sponsor James H. Hurley, PhD, at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Bethesda, Maryland, aims to understand how autophagy, the process of cellular "self-digestion," is regulated in the cell. She hopes that her research will help shed light on the role of autophagy in different types of cancer.
Alexandra Zidovska, PhD, with her sponsor Timothy J. Mitchison, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, is studying the physical properties of the cell during cell division. To do so, she is mechanically perturbing cells by physical confinement or application of external forces. Her findings may result in new insights about the mechanics of cell division, contributing to a better understanding of how this process is disrupted in cancer.
Source: Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation