CELL REGULATION AND TRANSMEMBRANE SIGNALING

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

1. CELL REGULATION AND TRANSMEMBRANE SIGNALING PROGRAM Marc Caron, Ph.D. and Anthony Means, Ph.D., Co-Leaders The goal of the Program in Cell Regulation and Transmembrane Signaling is to foster scientific interactions between members of the Comprehensive Cancer Center who have interest in understanding the biology involved in regulating cell proliferation and death. The Program currently consists of individuals from 11 different basic and clinical departments. In order to provide and maintain an outstanding forum for scientific discourse and collaboration, the Program regroups its 35 participants into one of four specific interest groups. These groups are: 1)transmembrane signaling; 2) intracellular signaling; 3) cell proliferation and death; and 4) signaling and disease. The diversity of experimental approaches used by the members of this Program represents an effective asset for fostering cross-fertilization of ideas aimed at understanding cell growth and regulation. It is remarkable that since the last competing renewal, members of the Program have published 990 papers in primary peer-reviewed journals of which 760 or 75% bear directly on cancer-related problems. Finally nearly 10% of the cancer related publications (85) are the result of intra-programmatic collaboration and over 5% (53 papers) were published due to inter-program cooperation. The primary sponsored activity of this Program continues to be the weekly Colloquium in Signal Transduction series, which has become the best-attended seminar series on campus. A panel of Program members selects speakers, the majority of whom come from outside of DUMC, to represent the broad interests of the membership. Appendix PI-A is a list of all our invited speakers since 1998. An additional innovation in the Program is to include each year a number seminars that focus on development of anticancer therapeutics. Each colloquium speaker visits for one or two days and meets with interested members of the Program. In addition, the students in the Molecular Cancer Biology Graduate Program have lunch with the speaker immediately after completion of the seminar.