Dr. Karen Block, a fellow in the laboratory of Dr.Hanna Abboud, captured the $500 first prize in the postdoctoral category. Her winning poster brought a $30,000 SACI award for Dr. Abboud’s lab. Dr. Dave Sharp presented the certificate to Dr. Block.
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About 70 faculty members, students and research staff convened May 25 for the Genomic Integrity and Carcinogenesis Retreat of the San Antonio Cancer Institute (SACI). The meeting enabled the researchers to share scientific and professional interactions and to hear more about the many programs and resources offered through the SACI, one of only two National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Centers in Texas.

“We want to enhance the research that is going on at the Health Science Center with activities that enrich the scientific community,” said Christi A. Walter, Ph.D., interim chair of cellular and structural biology and leader of the SACI Genomic Integrity and Carcinogenesis Program.

One of the day’s talks focused on small-animal imaging capabilities available through the SACI. “This retreat fostered the cross-fertilization of ideas, technologies and resources in cancer,” said Z. Dave Sharp, Ph.D., interim chair of molecular medicine and co-leader of the Genomic Integrity and Carcinogenesis Program.

Bruce Nicholson, Ph.D., professor and chair of biochemistry, delivered an invited lecture on the role of gap junctions in suppressing cancer. Raymond Stallings, Ph.D., professor at the Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI), presented an invited lecture on chromosomal instability.

Twenty-five Health Science Center research projects were presented on posters displayed throughout the first floor of the CCRI and 20 were entered into the poster competition, Dr. Walter said.

Karen Block, Ph.D., a fellow in the laboratory of Hanna Abboud, M.D., professor of medicine and chief of nephrology, captured the $500 first prize in the postdoctoral category. Her winning poster, which also brought a $30,000 SACI award for Dr. Abboud’s lab, was on the role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in renal cancer. She found that ROS increase activation of the angiogenic pathway in culture. In the body, this activity would result in formation of tiny blood vessels feeding kidney cancers with nutrients and enabling them to grow.

Dr. Block earned her Ph.D. in molecular medicine from the Health Science Center.

Sapna Vijayakumar, Ph.D., a graduate student in the laboratory of Susan Naylor, Ph.D., professor of cellular and structural biology, won the $500 first prize in the graduate student category. Her winning poster, which also brought a $20,000 SACI award for Dr. Naylor’s lab, was on the role of the Y chromosome in prostate cancer. Dr. Vijayakumar has used a genomic microarray to look at Y chromosome deletions in the disease, particularly in a region on the short arm of the Y chromosome near the centromere.

Dr. Sapna Vijayakumar, a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Susan Naylor, won the $500 first prize in the graduate student category. Her winning poster brought a $20,000 SACI award for Dr. Naylor’s lab.

In 1998 Dr. Vijayakumar earned a Ph.D. in fish biology at the Central Institute of Fisheries Education in Mumbai, India. She came to the Health Science Center in 2000 to further study molecular biology, which she became interested in while she did her first Ph.D. She will defend her dissertation on June 20 and is headed for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York for a fellowship with Stuart Aaronson, M.D., a famous cancer biologist.

Dee Allen, senior research associate in the lab of Dr. Walter, won first prize in the technician category. Her winning poster was on the loss of alleles of DNA repair genes and the resulting mutagenic effects. Her Master of Science degree in cellular and structural biology is from the Health Science Center.

Other poster winners in the three categories were (postdoctoral) Dr. Maryanne Herzig, second; Dr. Xiufen Lei, third; (graduate) Xiaolin Tan, second; Anjana Chandrasekar, third; and (technician) Brett Mueller, second; and Ali Bahadur, third.