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| Vol. 23, No. 10 |
| June 1, 2001 |
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Research Scholarships, Professorship and Fellowship Awarded By SHANNON RASP The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston awarded two scholarships, a professorship, and a graduate fellowship at a luncheon held recently at The Doctor's Club of Houston. Elizabeth Lafleur, whose faculty advisor is Dr. Eugenie Kleinerman, was awarded the Andrew Sowell-Wade Huggins Scholarship. This award recognizes students pursuing cancer research. The Sowell and Huggins families started the scholarship program 10 years ago with a $2,000 gift in celebration of the successful treatments of their sons, Andrew and Wade, who were both diagnosed with testicular cancer when they were 26 years old. Lafleur, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Cancer Biology, studies osteosarcoma (bone cancer) at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center as well as at the GSBS. Bone cancer strikes mainly teenagers, often causing them to have limbs amputated. Even after amputation, half of all patients will develop cancerous tumors in the lungs within a year. Julie Cerrato, a Ph.D. candidate in neuro-oncology (brain cancer) was recognized as the Sylvan Rodriguez/Cancer Answers scholar. Named in honor of the popular Houston news anchorman, this scholarship was first awarded last year in the presence of Rodriguez, who had less than a week to live at the time. This year, Dr. Shelley Sekula Rodriguez, his widow, was in attendance to congratulate Cerrato. Brain cancer affects 17,000 people annually. Researchers at the GSBS and at M. D. Anderson are experimenting with novel treatments, such as gene therapy, in an effort to help brain cancer patients. Dr. George Stancel, GSBS dean and interim vice president for research affairs at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, also announced the recipients of the first Andrew Sowell/Wade Huggins professorship and graduate fellowship. Dr. William Plunkett and his graduate student, Zheng (Jane) Shi, were awarded these honors. Dr. Plunkett and Shi work in the Department of Experimental Therapeutics, where they focus on discovering and designing new treatments for cancer, especially leukemia. "Our latest discovery is actually the result of a failed negative experiment," said Dr. Plunkett. He went on to explain that in order to test a hypothesis, researchers will deliberately set up an experiment designed to fail, thereby proving the hypothesis. In their case, however, the experiment did not fail - it worked. So instead, the team was able to pursue a new line of thought about how human cells become resistant to cytotoxic agents, such as chemotherapy. Shi's work has actually led to a clinical trial at M. D. Anderson, where doctors are giving treatment-resistant leukemia patients a new combination of drugs designed to overcome cell resistance to chemotherapy. "We sincerely appreciate the generosity of the families, and we will continue to work hard to help cancer patients by pursuing new therapies and treatments," said Shi.
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