Research Enterprise Newsletter - December 2008: Faculty News
Waterman gives McCormick lecture at Emory
Mike Waterman, Ph.D., chair of Biochemistry, presented the second annual Donald B. McCormick lecture in the Biochemistry Department at Emory University School of Medicine on November 6. Dr. McCormick was chair of Biochemistry at Emory from 1979 through 1994 and currently is Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry. Dr. McCormick is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and took Ph.D. training at Vanderbilt's Biochemistry Department, working with Dr. Oscar Touster. Dr. Waterman's lecture was entitled "Unique Microbial Cytochrome P450 Monooxygenases."
Trio named to new leadership roles
Three Vanderbilt University School of Medicine faculty members are taking on new leadership roles.
- Susan Wente, Ph.D., has been named assistant vice chancellor for Research.
- David Raiford, M.D., will become senior associate dean for Faculty Affairs and assistant vice chancellor for Health Affairs.
- Lynn Webb, Ph.D., M.B.A., has been named assistant vice chancellor for Health Affairs.
Raiford and Webb assumed their new duties Nov. 15, while Wente's appointment is effective Dec. 1.
NCI grant to support new Imaging Center
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a $7.5 million grant to the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center to establish a new imaging program. John Gore, Ph.D., is director of the Institute of Imaging Science and principal investigator for the new grant.
The five-year grant will support the Vanderbilt In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center (ICMIC), which will provide enhanced scientific and technical resources to develop innovative molecular imaging studies of cancer biology and to advance translational imaging research in cancer care. A special focus of the program will be to develop innovative imaging biomarkers that can be used to predict and measure whether patients respond to specific treatments.
The ICMIC will create several specialized resources, including an expanded small animal imaging core, a chemistry core, a radiochemistry core and a biostatistics core. The research will focus on the development and application of sensitive new imaging probes and allow researchers to assess how specific in vivo molecular signal transduction pathways, and physiologic changes caused by changes in these pathways, are modified by cancer and cancer therapy.
The ICMIC grant will initially fund four major projects:
- Molecular imaging of EGFR-axis targeted treatment in colon cancer, directed by Robert Coffey Jr., M.D.;
- Imaging tumor expression of cyclooxygenase-2, directed by Larry Marnett, Ph.D.;
- Noninvasive assessment of cancer responsiveness to therapy by use of recombinant peptide ligands, directed by Dennis Hallahan, M.D.; and
- Proteolytic beacons in the non-invasive assessment of response to cancer therapy, directed by Lynn Matrisian, Ph.D.
All four projects will assess the response mechanisms of novel, targeted anti-cancer treatments using imaging probes via optical, PET and SPECT imaging. The research will be complemented by measuring downstream effects using ultrasound, MRI and CT scans.
The ICMIC grant also will encourage new investigations through a series of Discovery Grants for Pilot Projects and will nurture scientists and physicians to become independent investigators in molecular imaging of cancer by supporting career development.
