NEWS

Researchers to examine developmental biology, cancer at Lineberger symposium

By AMY PHILBECK
UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

CHAPEL HILL -- Scientists from across the nation, including a Nobel Prize winner, will gather at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill March 27-28 to discuss the basic mechanisms involved in developmental biology and their relation to cell survival and cancer.

Nobel Prize winner Dr. Eric Wieschaus will be among the featured lecturers at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center’s 26th Annual Scientific Symposium, "Developmental Biology: Implications for Human Cancers." During the symposium’s second day, he will discuss what model organisms have taught scientists.

"This will be an absolutely fabulous meeting, bringing together scientists to discuss and explain the relationships between the biology of animal development and human cancer," said Dr. Albert Baldwin, symposium chairman, professor of biology and associate director of basic research at the Lineberger center.

The symposium will be held at the William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. All symposium sessions are open and free to the public, but pre-registration is recommended.

Registration begins at 8:15 a.m. March 27. Dr. H. Shelton Earp III, Lineberger center director, and Baldwin will welcome participants and give introductory remarks at 8:45 a.m.

The first session, titled "Cell Survival and Cancer Development," is chaired by Dr. David C. Lee, biochemistry and biophysics chairman at UNC and leader of the Lineberger center’s cancer cell biology program. The session begins at 9 a.m. with Dr. H. Robert Horvitz, professor of biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; he will deliver the first of two Lineberger lectures on "Genetic Control of Apoptosis in C. elegans."

The following doctors will also speak: Dr. Craig B. Thompson, scientific director at Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center; Dr. Pier Paolo Pandolfi, a scientist in the molecular biology program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and Dr. Gregg L. Semenza, professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Nancy Raab-Traub will chair the second session, "Gene Control, Development and Cancer," which will begin at 1:30 p.m. Raab-Traub is a professor of microbiology and immunology at UNC and leader of the Lineberger center’s virology program.

The speakers for session two are as follows: Dr. Terry R. Magnuson, Sarah Graham Kenan professor at UNC, director of the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and leader of the Lineberger center’s cancer genetics program; Dr. Stephen B. Baylin, professor of tumor biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Dr. Jacqueline A. Lees, associate director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Cancer Research; and Dr. Robert J. Duronio, assistant professor of biology at UNC and member of the Lineberger center’s cancer cell biology program.

Session three will begin March 28 at 8:30 a.m. "Cell Signaling and Development" is chaired by Dr. Mark A. Peifer, associate professor of biology at UNC and member of the Lineberger center’s cancer cell biology program.

"Cell Signaling and Development" will include the following speakers: Dr. Eric F. Wieschaus, professor of molecular biology at Princeton University, delivering the second Lineberger lecture; Dr. Philip A. Beachy, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Dr. Andrew P. McMahon, professor in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University; and Dr. Judith Kimble, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Symposium sponsors are the Lineberger center and the UNC School of Medicine departments of biochemistry and biophysics, cell and developmental biology, cell and molecular physiology, chemistry, dermatology, genetics, medicine, microbiology and immunology, pathology and laboratory medicine, radiation oncology and surgery.

Eight businesses and organizations also supported the symposium: Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks, Calif.; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Ridgefield, Conn.; Sphinx Laboratories, a unit of Eli Lilly and Co., of Research Triangle Park; GlaxoSmithKline of Research Triangle Park; Merck Research Laboratories of Rahway, N.J.; the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of Research Triangle Park; the North Carolina Biotechnology Center of Research Triangle Park; and Roche Molecular Biochemicals of Indianapolis.

Lunch will be provided, for a cost of $8, at the Friday Center on March 27; a 5:30 p.m. reception and a 6:30 p.m. banquet will be held that day at the university’s Kenan Center. Cost to attend the reception and banquet is $25. For more information, call Martha Taylor, symposium coordinator, at (919) 966-3036. Online registration and additional information are available at http://cancer.med.unc.edu/symposium/.

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Lineberger center contacts: Dianne G. Shaw at (919) 966-5905 or Judy Swasey at (919) 843-8057