January 7 - March 12, 2020
Tuesdays and Thursdays
3:20 - 4:40 PM
Room B1-074/076 (next to Pelton Auditorium), Weintraub Building, Fred Hutch Campus
Understanding and controlling cancer is one of the major challenges of 21st century biology. Contemporary research on cancer encompasses multiple disciplines including molecular and cellular biology, virology, structural biology, evolutionary genetics, genomics and epidemiology. This course consists of a series of lectures and discussion meetings to introduce students to the major themes in research on the etiology of neoplastic change. The lectures will cover principal molecular mechanisms responsible for tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis with a specific emphasis on oncogenic drivers and tumor suppressors and loss of normal tissue homeostasis. Background concepts and state of the art research with emphasis on current major questions in cancer biology will be presented by faculty who are experts in their fields. The discussion meetings will concentrate on selected major papers in cancer biology and be presented and discussed by the students with help and guidance of the instructors.
Grading: Student overall participation, activity during discussions, quality and depth of the research paper presentation, and the written research proposal on one of the topics in cancer biology will be used for course credit and grading.
Prerequisites: Introductory biochemistry and cell biology.
Enrollment in the course is limited to 20 students.
Introduction: Genetic Basis of Cancer
MYC: An Oncogene Paradigm
Cancer Stem Cells and Differentiation
Cancer Epidemiology
The Deranged Cancer Genome
Literature Review 1
Faculty Discussant: Slobodan Beronja, PhD
Viral Cancers
Nuclear Organization and Dynamics
Tumor Metabolism
Literature Review 2
Faculty Discussant: Lucas Sullivan, PhD
Cell Adhesion
Metastasis
Protein Synthesis and Cancer
Literature Review 3
Faculty Discussant: Andrew Hsieh, MD
Bacterial Cancer
Functional Genomics in Cancer Research
Cancer and the Immune System
Literature Review 4
Faculty Discussant: Alice Berger, PhD
Prostate Cancer
Literature Review 5
Faculty Discussant: Patrick Paddison, PhD
Course Organizers:
David MacPherson, PhD
dmacpher@fredhutch.org
Bob Eisenman, PhD
eisenman@fredhutch.org
Guest Lecturers:
Alice Berger, PhD
ahberger@fredhutch.org
Slobodan Beronja, PhD
beronja@fredhutch.org
Denise Galloway, PhD
dgallowa@fredhutch.org
Cyrus Ghajar, PhD
cghajar@fredhutch.org
Phil Greenberg, MD
pgreen@u.washington.edu
Emily Hatch, PhD
ehatch@fredhutch.org
Andrew Hsieh, MD
ahsieh@fredhutch.org
Chris Li, MD, PhD
clll@fredhutch.org
Pete Nelson, MD
pnelson@fredhutch.org
Patrick Paddison, PhD
paddison@fredhutch.org
Nina Salama, PhD
nsalama@fredhutch.org
Lucas Sullivan, PhD
lucas@fredhutch.org
Valeri Vasioukhin, PhD
vvasiouk@fredhutch.org