Olufunmilayo Olopade, Professor in Medicine and Human Genetics and Director of the Cancer Risk Clinic at the University Hospitals, will be the first recipient of the American Association for Cancer Research’s Minorities in Cancer Research-Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship.

The award is given to an outstanding scientist who has made “meritorious contributions to the field of cancer research and who has, through leadership or by example, furthered the advancement of minority investigators in cancer research.” (The University of Chicago Chronicle, April 27, 2006). 

Christy Hagan, a PhD student in the Committee on Cancer Biology, won the Brigid G. Leventhal Women in Cancer Research Award from the American Association for Cancer Research in April, 2005. She works with Dr. Charles Rudin. (The Imprint, Spring 2006).

On April 26, the University of Chicago officially opened its largest science building and announced that Ellen and Melvin Gordon, who operate Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc., have donated $25 million to name the building.  The Ellen and Melvin Gordon Center for Integrative Science houses scientists in the Divisions of the Biological Sciences and the Physical Sciences, allowing them to pursue innovative research that crosses traditional boundaries between physics, chemistry, and biology. (The University of Chicago Legacy, Volume 18, The Forefront, May/June 2006,  The University of Chicago Chronicle, Vol. 25 No. 15, Peer Review Spring 2006).

Three new high-tech facilities in the Center for Integrative Science will augment the University’s research in a range of projects that include the fabrication of nanostructures, studying how catalysts drive chemical reactions and probing conditions inside various parts of a cell.
The facilities will be equipped with an array of new research instruments: a scanning electron microscope, an electron paramagnetic resonance instrument, and a time-resolved luminescence spectrometer and microscope, which will be available for use by University and Argonne scientists. Scientists at the University and Argonne already share the Enrico Fermi Institute’s electron microprobe facility, which has been operating for about one year. University scientists use the microprobe to study the chemical composition of meteorites and other materials (The University of Chicago Chronicle, March 2006).

Cancer research typically focuses on primary cancers-- those first developed in places like the lungs, breast, and prostate.  Until now, little has been studied on metastatis, which is actually the leading cause of cancer deaths.  Even if the primary cancer is destroyed, once it metastasizes, or spreads, to distant sites, such as other organs or tissue, the chances of survival are drastically decreased.  The Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Foundation are joining forces to fight this fatal disease.  Ralph Weichselbaum, M.D., and Geoff Greene, Ph.D., are co-directors of the Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research. (The University of Chicago Legacy, Volume 18).

The deadliest aspect of cancer is its ability to metastasize, or migrate from one part of the body to another, where cancerous cells use a new substrate to ultimately grow into detectable and deadly tumors. While current cancer research efforts have expanded exponentially in recent years, the focus of these efforts has been on primary cancers. Metastasis as a distinct physiological process with its own dynamics has remained largely unexplored and thus poorly understood.

To help address this, the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has created a new Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research at the University of Chicago. Initial funding for the Ludwig Center will come from the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund and consists of $6 million over 3 years, followed by an additional $12 to 14 million over a subsequent 7 years. (Peer Review, Winter, 2006)