Ben May Dept of Cancer Retreat held 1st annual retreat on Nov. 13th 2012. Click here for image gallery
Ben May Retreat 2012
"Discovery is our Business." Charles Huggins (Nobel Prize Laureate)
Welcome to the Ben May Department
Faces of Ben May Dept. of Cancer Research View the Gallery
Faces of BMDCR
"With blood on the hands I have chance, seated at the desk I have no chance." Charles Brenton Huggins (Nobel Prize Laureate) Click Here for Biography of Dr. Huggins
Biography of Charles Brenton Huggins
Welcome to the Ben May Department for Cancer Research
Our vision is a future where cancer is eliminated by total cure or managed by chronic treatment that enables a high quality of life.
The mission of the Ben May Department is embodied in the motto of our founder, the late Nobel Prize winner Charles Huggins: "Discovery is our Business." In that spirit of discovery, our researchers are pushing the boundaries of understanding and challenging the assumptions that often impede progress. We believe the first step toward preventing or curing cancer is basic research on the intricacies of the human body and the molecular, cellular, and genetic events that lead to cancer. Advances in our fundamental understanding of cancer can then be translated into better methods of prevention and diagnosis.
Latest News and Announcements
Cellular Garbage Collectors Beat West Nile, Study Shows
Dr. Kay Macleod was quoted in the Bloomberg News on new work by Beth Levine at UT Southwestern that published on-line this week in Nature. Dr. Levine and colleagues identified a novel mechanism by which the activity of Beclin1, a key autophagy protein is regulated in response to viral infection. More significantly, the work exploited the use of a re-engineered Tat-fusion peptide from the relevant domain of Beclin1 to induce autophagy in cells and in mice to eliminate viruses, such as West Nile virus and others. As Dr.
Inactivation of BAD by IKK Inhibits TNFα-Induced Apoptosis Independently of NF-κB Activation
Anning Lin, PhD, a Professor of the Ben May Department for Cancer Research, and colleagues discovered a novel mechanism by which the I*B kinase complex (IKK) inhibits tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-induced apoptosis in a recent issus of Cell (Yan et al. Cell 152:304-315, 2013). IKK is a key regulator of inflammation, immune responses, and tumorigenesis. For a long time, it has been thought that IKK inhibits TNF-induced apoptosis through activation of NF-*B. The work of Lin laboratory changed this prevailing paradigm.
Elwood V. Jensen, Pioneer in Breast Cancer Treatment, Dies at 92
Elwood V. Jensen, a medical researcher whose studies of steroid hormones led to new treatments for breast cancer that have been credited with saving or extending hundreds of thousands of lives, died on Dec. 16 in Cincinnati. He was 92.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son, Thomas Jensen, said.
SH2 Interactome
The SH2 domain map for Insulin, IGF-1 and FGF signaling.
Research by Dr. Piers Nash and colleagues published in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell Communication and Signaling describes a large set of interactions (interactome) which maps the range of phosphotyrosine (pTyr)-dependent interactions with SH2 domains underlying insulin (Ins), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF) signaling pathways.