Email this pageCancer Biology
Through collaboration between basic science and clinical researchers, an understanding of the critical inherited and acquired genetics of cancer is emerging. Cancer genes and their protein products are being assigned to cellular pathways that control growth, trigger cell death, fuel angiogenesis, and facilitate metastasis. As these pathways are defined, strategies for therapeutic targets are being developed to exploit the acquired characteristics of cancer cells. This knowledge flows in both directions, with an understanding of the disease process furthering our understanding of the basic mechanisms that are a normal component of embryogenesis and growth.
Cancer research in the Graduate Program in Pathology includes projects investigating the basic biochemistry of DNA replication and chromatin structure, DNA damage and repair, apoptosis, tumor genetics, cell signaling, metastasis, animal models, and organ-site specific programs in prostate, skin, bladder, and hematopoietic cancers.
Above is a hypothetical schematic composite diagram of prostate cancer with focal neuroendocrine differentiation (triangular cells) showing potential neuroendocrine products with known receptors, pathways of neuroendocrine activation, and neuroendocrine action. (Images courtesy of Dr. P. Anthony di Sant'Agnese from The Neuroendocrine Prostate.)
Electron photomicrograph of neoplastic
neuroendocrine cells in carcinoma.
Faculty investigating the causes and treatment of cancer:
