Collaborative Cancer Grand Rounds with Cornell's Dr. Lewis Cantley

Fri, 01/11/2019 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm

This presentation is hosted by the University of Arizona Cancer Center...

TOPIC: “PI 3-Kinase: Linking Obesity, Diabetes and Cancer”
PRESENTER: Lewis C. Cantley, PhD
Professor of Cancer Biology and Medicine; Director, Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center; and The Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor in Oncology Research, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, New York, N.Y.

Friday, Jan. 11, 2019
Noon-1 p.m.
DuVal Auditorium, Banner – University Medical Center Tucson

Watch It LIVE!

Afterward, you’ll find this and other lectures in this grand round series archived at this link.

Space is limited, so please RSVP by Friday, Jan. 4, 2019

RSVP Here!

View, post and share the flyer for this event:  cancer-grand-rounds_01-11-2019_cantley_flyer.pdf

About the Speaker:
The research of Dr. Lewis Cantley, Director of the Cancer Center of Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, is focused on understanding the biochemical pathways that regulate normal mammalian cell growth and the defects that cause cell transformation. Dr. Cantley, whose early work was on the structure and mechanism of enzymes that transport small molecules across cell membranes, pioneered the application of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) for studying such processes.

In the mid-1980s, Dr. Cantley conducted research on biochemical mechanisms of cellular responses to hormones and growth factors that led to the discovery of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling pathway. He and his colleagues at Tufts University School of Medicine identified PI3K as an enzyme that co-purified with a variety of oncoproteins. Subsequent research from their laboratory and other laboratories showed that PI3K activation is critical for oncogene-mediated cell transformation, as well as for insulin-dependent stimulation of glucose uptake and metabolism, with the subsequent revelation that lipid products of PI3K directly activate the AKT/PKB protein kinase to provide a cell survival signal. This discovery, as well as subsequent discoveries from other laboratories that human cancers frequently have activating mutations in PI3K genes and/or inactivating mutations in the PTEN gene (encoding a phosphatase that degrades PI3K lipid products), stimulated pharmaceutical companies to develop PI3K pathway inhibitors for cancer therapy.

Dr. Cantley did his undergrad studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and earned his doctorate at Cornell University. He conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University, where he completed a master’s degree and was appointed assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in 1978. He became a professor of physiology at Tufts University in 1985, but returned to Harvard Medical School as professor of cell biology in 1992. He became chief of Harvard’s new Division of Signal Transduction, and a founding member of its Department of Systems Biology in 2002. In 2007, he was appointed director of the Beth Israel Deaconess Cancer Center. He joined the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in 2012.

More information about his lab can be found at: cantleylab.weill.cornell.edu

Contact: Melynda Noble, Coordinator, Projects and Events, UA Cancer Center, (520) 626-4413, melnoble@email.arizona.edu

Event Location: 

Banner – University Medical Center Tucson, DuVal Auditorium
1501 N. Campbell Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85724