Postdoctoral Research Associate, 1967-71, McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin. The Carcinogenesis Laboratory, a unit in the College of Osteopathic Medicine, specializes in research on the origin of human cancer. Strong evidence suggests that environmental agents, including smoking, are responsible for the majority of human cancer. However, the biochemical mechanisms by which normal cells are transformed into tumor-producing cells are not yet understood. Our goal is to gain insight into these processes so that strategies can be developed to interrupt or thwart this malignant transformation.
Current studies center on two main areas.
The first addresses the process by which normal human cells in culture become malignant. For a normal human cell to become malignant, it must acquire appropriate changes in six or more specific genes out of the 100,000 genes in a cell. We have identified five genes in human fibroblasts that can play a causal role in their malignant transformation. We are now trying to identify three additional genes that play a causal role in this process. These gene isolation techniques are used in connection with procedures to demonstrate the role of these genes in the cancer process.