This proposal requests support for 4 predoctoral and 7 postdoctoral trainees to continue a multidisciplinary and unified cancer research training program in the Regulatory Biology of Cancer and Growth Control that encompasses organismal, translational, endocrinology, genetic, cellular, and molecular biological studies. The cancer biology research training activities will be directed by eleven program faculty mentors, nine from The University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and two from the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). The nine UC Berkeley program faculty represent three divisions within the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and constitute the core members of the Cancer Research Laboratory (CRL), an Organized Research Unit of the University of California at Berkeley that is the administrative home of our training program. The two new program faculty from CHORI and its associated Children's Hospital and Research Center at Oakland are directly involved with both basic and translational oncology research. Together, the individual research interests of our Training Program faculty covers overlapping disciplines that are needed to comprise an interactive and dynamic training program in The Regulatory Biology of Cancer and Growth Control. Our training program in cancer biology fills a unique and crucial niche in the academic training of cancer researchers because UC Berkeley does not have a medical school on its campus. In addition, our program will provide important cross-fertilization for multidisciplinary scientific exchanges in the rapidly evolving field of cancer biology that will enrich the scientific environments at both UC Berkeley and CHORI. Our trainees are selected on competitive basis from the excellent pool of postdoctral fellows and graduate students who enter the laboratories of our training program faculty. The focus of our program is to expose graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to an integrated multidisciplinary academic and research training that provides the critical scientific depth needed to productively teach our trainees to creatively and rigorously explore cutting-edge issues in cancer cell growth control, function and tumorigenesis. We hope to foster the kind of creativity that will lead to novel findings and which can contribute to cancer prevention and cure. The mechanisms to accomplish this objective are based on our new affiliation with CHORI and its strong translational training environment, an academic curriculum that augments Departmental requirements with issues of cancer biology, the nurturing guidance and continual evaluation of trainees, the cohesiveness and capabilities of the faculty, the available resources for research, the many research seminars such as our Tumor Biology Seminar Series, the Cancer Research Laboratory Distinguished Lectureship, the Clinical/Translational Seminar Series in which clinical scientists from nearby hospitals, medical schools, and research institutes present their work to our trainees, and our proposed annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium in Basic and Translational Oncology.
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