[Chronicle]

Jan. 9, 2003
Vol. 22 No. 7

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    New lecture series set to begin in Biological Sciences Division

    By Catherine Gianaro
    Medical Center Pulbic Affairs

    The Biological Sciences Division will introduce a new series of free public lectures at the University, beginning Saturday, Jan. 18. This is the inaugural lecture series of what is planned to be an annual event.

    The lectures are named for Charles B. Huggins, the first director of the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research, who was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work published in 1941, showing that deprivation of testosterone can halt prostate cancer.

    The eight lectures in this first series, titled “Cancer and Hormones,” will provide information on how hormones control cancer growth at the level of individual protein molecules, and they will look at 3-dimensional images of these proteins, which act as molecular machines that control the growth or death of a cell. The lectures also will explain some of the biochemical details of how a cell repairs damaged DNA or dies if the damage is too great.

    The lectures will be held Saturday mornings from 11 a.m. to noon, from Jan. 18 through March 8, in Room 106 of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center, 5720 S. Ellis Ave.

    Kendall Nettles, a senior graduate student in the Committee on Cancer Biology, will deliver the lectures. Nettles earned a B.A. from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., and currently is conducting research for his dissertation in the laboratory of biochemist and molecular biologist Geoffrey Greene, Professor and Associate Director in the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research.

    The lectures are intended to make science accessible to a general audience and to convey the excitement of new discoveries in the biological sciences. All of the lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, call (773) 834-3899.