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Fundamentals of Cancer Research: Introduction and Overview

Dr. Susan Hockfield Robert J. Silbey Tyler Jacks: June 7, 2006; Running Time: 39:30

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

This inaugural address lays the groundwork for an 11-part series on MIT’s efforts in cancer research. Susan Hockfield views MIT’s Center for Cancer Research as a central example of how “life sciences are coming into conversation with engineering in a powerful way.” Robert Silbey provides historical background on the notion of faculty ‘short courses’, and positions the Center as “the jewel in the crown of MIT, a spawning ground for scientific discovery and rewards.”

Tyler Jacks introduces the key research areas and scientists who will speak in the succeeding sessions. He offers a thumbnail sketch of cancer as a molecular genetic progression involving sequential alterations in, and the proliferation of, abnormal cells. “Think of a cancer cell like an integrated circuit: the same kinds of complexities in electronic networks also exist within cells,” notes Jacks. Because of work on the human genome, and advances in scientists’ ability to untangle these complex molecular interactions, “We now have the first generation of anti-cancer drugs targeted against molecular alterations in cancer,” says Jacks. Two highly successful drugs have already been derived from MIT research.

In addition, says Jacks, collaboration among biologists, engineers and mathematicians are yielding “a tremendous collection of tools and technologies.” These include tiny probes that enable diagnosis of cancers at earlier stages, nanoparticles that deliver a therapeutic payload directly to cancer cells, and devices that can be implanted in the body.

Lecture Details

Location: 46-3002

“Better understanding of molecular alterations in cancer has translated over the years into the development of better drugs. This is the future. Application of these techniques and others will enable us to treat cancers more widely... more thoroughly and durably, with fewer side effects.”

Tyler Jacks

About the Speakers

Dr. Susan Hockfield

MIT President
Professor of Neuroscience

Susan Hockfield has served as the sixteenth president of MIT since December 2004. A strong advocate of the vital role that science, technology, and the research university play in the world, she believes that MIT can best advance its historic mission of teaching, research, and service by providing robust and sustained support for the ideas and energies of its faculty and students.

A noted neuroscientist whose research has focused on the development of the brain, Dr. Hockfield is the first life scientist to lead MIT and holds a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience in the Institute's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Under her leadership, MIT has launched a major Institute-wide initiative in energy research and education and continues to expand its activities at the intersection of the life sciences and engineering, with a particular focus on cancer research. The Institute has also embarked on a sustained effort to strengthen support for student life and learning, including undergraduate curriculum renewal, and is undertaking major campus construction and renovation projects with a combined value of approximately three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Before assuming the presidency of MIT, Dr. Hockfield was the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology and provost at Yale University. She joined the Yale faculty in 1985 and was named full professor in 1994. While at Yale, she played a central role in the university's leadership, first as dean of its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1998-2002), with oversight of more than 70 graduate programs, and then as provost, the university's chief academic and administrative officer.

Dr. Hockfield earned her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. from the Georgetown University School of Medicine, while carrying out her dissertation research in neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at San Francisco in 1979-80, and then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1980. She served as director of the Laboratory's Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997, concurrent with her teaching post at Yale, and more recently as a trustee of the laboratory. Her memberships in professional societies include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Neuroscience.

Robert J. Silbey

Class of 1942 Professor of Chemistry

Robert J. Silbey joined the MIT faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1966. He became Head of the Chemistry Department in 1990-1995. He was appointed Director of the Center for Materials Science & Engineering in 1998. He served as Dean of the School of Science from 2000-2007. Silbey's primary research concerns the theoretical studies of a) the low temperature thermal properties of glasses, b) energy and electron transfer and relaxation in molecular aggregates, c) the optical and electronic properties of conjugated polymers and d) in collaboration with Professor Field, the dynamics of highly vibrationally excited molecules.

Silbey has received numerous teaching awards at MIT, and has lectured extensively throughout the world. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1965.

Tyler Jacks

Director, David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and David H. Koch Professor of Biology, MIT
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Tyler Jacks received his A.B. in biology from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco. His graduate work with Harold Varmus involved the mechanism of ribosomal frameshifting in retroviral gene expression. As a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, Jacks began his work on tumor-suppressor gene function, using gene targeting in the mouse. He was named an assistant professor at MIT in 1992 and associate professor with tenure in 1997. In 2000, he was promoted to full professor standing.

Jacks was named the 2005 Simon M. Shubitz Lecturer and Award recipient, and shared the 2005 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research awarded by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

About the Host