PHILADELPHIA-- Louise Showe, PhD, a scientist at The Wistar Institute, was awarded one of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) first grants under a new program, "The Director's Challenge: Toward a Molecular Classification of Tumors."
The purpose of the Director's Challenge grants is to challenge the scientific community to develop a more informative classification of tumors using modern molecular analysis technologies. The goal of the program is to establish new criteria for defining tumor stages by identifying differences in the complex patterns of genes expressed in their cells.
Dr. Showe's laboratory is conducting research on CTCL, the most common primary T-cell lymphoma of the skin. Using state-of-the-art robotic systems, she and her research team hope to give clinicians and pathologists new molecular tools that will enable them to identify CTCL accurately in its early stage and define the molecular events that contribute to cancer progression.
Dr. Showe has been a Wistar faculty member since 1983. She is the head of the Institute's Genomics Core Facility.
The Wistar Institute, established in 1892, was the first independent medical research facility in the country. For more than 100 years, Wistar scientists have been making history and improving world health through their development of vaccines for diseases that include rabies, German measles, infantile gastroenteritis (rotavirus), and cytomegalovirus; discovery of molecules like interleukin-12, which are helping the immune system fight bacteria, parasites, viruses and cancer; and location of genes that contribute to the development of diseases like breast, lung and prostate cancer. Wistar is a National Cancer Institute Cancer Center.