The Cancer and Developmental Biology Program (CDBP) includes 45 faculty distributed in 11 WashingtonUniversity School of Medicine departments. Developmental biologists share the hypothesis that canceroften results from fundamental errors in developmental regulatory mechanisms. CDBP investigators usemodel organisms to study oncogenes, oncogenic processes and, developmental pathways, and to testpotential cancer therapies. Over the years, fundamental discoveries in developmental biology have led tothe identification of new genes and regulatory mechanisms that are involved in the development ofmalignancies. Fundamental questions being asked by CDBP faculty include: How do cells in different partsof an embryo come to express very different sets of genes? How are such developmental processesprogrammed in the genome? What happens when developmental regulatory mechanisms fail? How domutations in developmental genes cause cancer? How do developmental regulatory mechanisms preventcancer? These are a few of the questions that are being answered in detail by the application of thepowerful techniques of modern cell and molecular biology to developmental systems. CDBP faculty willcontinue to use these systems to identify and understand the function of genes that can cause cancer ormodulate its outcome. Importantly, several studies within the CDBP have led to pharmacological studieswith potential translation to the clinic.CDBP faculty and students meet on a regular basis to discuss journal articles and present data.Laboratories studying developmental biology utilize many core facilities within the Siteman Cancer Center.These include the Cancer Center Embryonic Stem Cell Core, Multiplexed Gene Analysis Core, TissueProcurement Core and High Speed Cell Sorter Core. CDBP members will continue to play a key role incancer and developmental biology education at Washington University School of Medicine and the SitemanCancer Center.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 1244 publications
