Piwnica-Worms Delivers PCB Retreat Keynote, Nov. DCI Seminar Series Talk

The November 2022 Duke Cancer Institute Seminar Series, to be held on Wednesday, November 16, in the Trent Semans Center Great Hall, will feature Duke University Medical School alumna Helen Piwnica-Worms, PhD, vice provost of Science and professor of Experimental Radiation Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

She will present “Tackling resistance in triple-negative breast cancer."

The Piwnica-Worms research laboratory focuses on identifying alterations with
functional significance to the development and progression of breast cancer. A major effort is directed toward elucidating the contribution made by heterogeneity (genomic, phenotypic, spatial, and compositional) in both the tumor and its microenvironment to cancer progression, metastasis, and resistance to therapy.

Piwnica-Worms is an American Cancer Society Research Professor and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

She earned her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at Duke University Medical School in 1984 and thereafter completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After serving year as a pathology instructor at Dana-Farber following fellowship, she moved to Tufts University Medical School where she served as an assistant professor of Physiology (1989-1992). This was followed by two years at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, where she served as associate professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics (1992-1994).

In 2013, after nearly two decades at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Piwnica-Worms relocated her research program to MD Anderson. At Washington, she'd been an HHMI investigator and served as chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology and associate director of Basic Science, Alvin J. Siteman Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Piwnica-Worms' talk is hosted by the Department of Pharmacology & Cancer Biology (PCB) — presented as the keynote for the department's Cancer Biology Seminar and Scientific Retreat in conjunction with the November 2022 DCI Seminar Series and Hematology Oncology Grand Rounds. The talk begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 9 a.m. and will be held at the Trent Semans Center, Great Hall.

Note

Registration to attend the lecture/keynote is not required. Duke faculty, staff, and students are welcome to attend.

Registration is NOW CLOSED for the rest of the PCB retreat.