William Flavahan, PhD, is one of 40 recipients of the $1.5 million NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, designed to support early career investigators who are proposing bold research.

UMass Chan Medical School scientists Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, and Prabhani Atukorale, PhD, have developed a new, dual immunotherapy approach that may potentially change the way clinicians treat pancreatic cancer.  

Two new donor-funded fellowships are being launched this year at UMass Chan to recruit recent postdoctoral scientists and, through intensive mentoring and resource support, foster their development as independent investigators. The fellowships align with the vision embodied in The Morningside Foundation’s transformational $175 million gift in 2021.  

Thirty college students participated in the 2024 Summer Undergraduate Research Program at UMass Chan Medical School, refining their career goals through networking with peers and mentors, collaborative research and developing critical thinking skills.  

Richard I. Gregory, PhD, will join UMass Chan Medical School as the next chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell & Cancer Biology, beginning in December.

Research aimed at identifying the mechanisms that promote resistance to radiation therapy in patients with triple negative breast cancer is underway at UMass Chan Medical School by Arthur M. Mercurio, PhD, thanks to a new $2.6 million cancer research award from the National Institutes of Health.

Nineteen rising high school juniors and seniors spent their summer participating in the immersive 2024 High School Health Careers Program at UMass Chan Medical School.  

Awards of $50,000 were distributed to support ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research in the neurosciences.

BRIDGE Innovation and Business Development at UMass Chan Medical School has set aside nearly $2 million in funding for six faculty-led research projects that hold promise for translation to clinical application and commercialization.  

Rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurological disorder that occurs primarily in girls, eventually robbing them of the ability to speak, walk or use their hands, among other devastating effects.

Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, resisted following in his parents’ scientist footsteps but ended up in a career dedicated to cancer research in and out of the lab.

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 A UMass Chan professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology explains the science behind CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology, following the FDA’s first approval of a gene-editing treatment for sickle cell disease.

UMass Chan presented “scientist-in-training” lab coats to Lake View Elementary School, one of the 11 North Quadrant schools in Worcester that are part of the UMass Chan North Quadrant Support Services Initiative.

Dohoon Kim, PhD, and colleagues have shown that blocking a specific detoxifying enzyme in lung cancer cells leads to cell death, making it a viable target for drug development.

Vaccination against COVID-19 was linked to reduced inflammation in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a paper co-authored by UMass Chan Medical School researcher Jonathan M. Gerber, MD.

The Research Scholar Grant will support Dr. Ruscetti’s research on senescent cells and their role in tumor progression and immune suppression in prostate cancer.

Michael Lodato, PhD, has received a 2023 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award from the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.

More than a dozen of Michael Green’s former colleagues, trainees and others are scheduled to speak at the symposium.

Four faculty members were honored with chancellor’s medals and four others were invested as endowed professors at the Convocation and Investiture ceremony at UMass Chan Medical School.

The festivities begin on Friday, Sept. 8 with the annual White Coat Ceremony, welcoming the new T.H. Chan School of Medicine students into the medical community.

The BRIDGE Fund supports critical research milestones for inventions and discoveries that have high potential to change the course of disease and continues to grow, increasing from approximately $1 million per year in 2019 to $3 million in 2024.

MD/PhD student Ayush Kumar has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Award from the National Cancer Institute to study the most aggressive type of breast cancer.

Craig Ceol, PhD, has received a grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to fund research on cellular and molecular regulators of melanocyte regeneration using zebrafish as a model.

UMass Chan Medical School celebrated Black History Month with a focus on the research of four of its Black scientists: Brain Lewis, PhD; Ayorkor Gaba, PsyD; MD/PhD student Zach Dyer; and Natalie Anumba, PhD.

As the UMass Chan mourns the recent death of Michael Green, MD, PhD, two faculty have been appointed to fill positions that Dr. Green nobly held. Jonathan M. Gerber, MD, has been appointed director of the UMass Cancer Center, and Michelle A. Kelliher, PhD, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell & Cancer Biology.

PhD candidate Lucas Restrepo tackles movement disorders using fruit fly genetics and, in his spare time, plays the banjo.

The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees voted to approve one new endowed chair at UMass Chan Medical School and the appointment of two accomplished faculty members to endowed chairs.

In his annual Convocation address to the UMass Chan Medical School community on Thursday, Sept. 16, Chancellor Michael F. Collins expressed optimism for the Medical School’s ambitious future and touted the enormous momentum moving the school forward.

The Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences honored the new doctoral candidates during its annual Qualifying Exam Recognition Ceremony on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at which Dean Mary Ellen Lane encouraged the honorees to continue “growing, learning and stretching out of your comfort zone.”

Thirty-two college undergraduates interested in careers in medicine and science spent 10 weeks immersed in the cutting-edge laboratories of UMass Chan investigators.

Shalom Njau and Yutian “Tina” Li are grateful and proud to be among the 16 members of the High School Health Careers Program Class of 2022 at UMass Chan Medical School, and confident that their experiences in the summer outreach program will help them achieve their goals.

Students in the UMass Chan Medical School Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program and Initiative for Maximizing Student Development program were honored at a dinner, where they were also given tips on interacting in professional social settings.

Chancellor Michael F. Collins announced that the University’s Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of three of faculty members to endowed chairs. They join more than 60 named chairs at UMass Chan.

PhD candidate Daniel Hidalgo will reflect on the value of positive thinking when he addresses his classmates at the UMass Chan Medical School 49th Commencement on Sunday, June 5.

The 2022 UMass Chan Medical School Educational Recognition Awards celebration was held on Tuesday, April 26 to honor achievement by faculty of all three schools. The recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring was named and Pang-Yen Fan, MD, delivered the honorary Last Lecture.

UMass Chan faculty in rheumatology, biochemistry & molecular biotechnology and cancer biology are being supported by endowments.

UMass Chan Medical School is holding a career fair on Wednesday, March 30, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Beechwood Hotel in Worcester.

Brian Lewis, PhD, is studying therapeutic resistance in pancreatic cancer cells, hoping to change the grim statistics for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

William Flavahan, PhD, has received a four-year, $600,000 award from the Sontag Foundation to advance his studies of the genetic processes leading to brain tumors.

Emmet Karner, a PhD student in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, was inspired by a passionate and influential teacher to go into the field.

The UMass Cancer Center Pilot Project Program has awarded seed grants to five UMass Chan Medical School research projects to enable investigators to gather pilot data for external cancer-focused funding.

Research by Sharon Cantor, PhD, into how chemotherapy works in inherited breast and ovarian cancer overturned a long-held model in the field and will play a key role in developing successful therapies.

Research from the lab of Sharon Cantor, PhD, provides a new understanding of a PARP inhibitor, a chemotherapy drug commonly used against breast and ovarian cancer.

The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Class of 2021 managed to complete their research despite having experiments halted for months by the COVID-19 pandemic. Heather Loring and James Shen reflect on the past year.

Sumeet Nayak’s research in the lab of Sharon B. Cantor, PhD, has led to a renewed understanding of how cancer develops and has opened up avenues to effectively advance anti-cancer therapies.

The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees approved two “accomplished and visionary” University of Massachusetts faculty as endowed chairs at its April meeting.

Six UMass Medical School scientists are among the members of the National Institutes of Health’s Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium to publish a paper in Nature outlining the program’s goals.

Cesar Bautista Sotelo, PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, is using cutting-edge techniques to study how cells and the genome shed offer information on human development, aging and disease.

National Institutes of Health research funding to UMass Medical School grew by 78 percent for the first quarter of fiscal 2021, which began July 1. Grants and contracts from all funding sources increased by nearly 50 percent.

Investigators at UMass Medical School have received two, five-year grants totaling $13 million to explore how the 4D genome structure influences gene expression, cellular function, development and disease as it reshapes itself. Job Dekker, PhD, and Paul Kaufman, PhD, to investigate architecture of genome as it changes over time.

Heidi Tissenbaum, PhD, was recently awarded a $460,000, two-year grant from the National Institute on Aging to explore at the molecular level the connections between aging, health, and the onset and severity of Alzheimer’s disease.

Brian Lewis, PhD, was recognized in the Evening of Hope 2020 Honor Roll during the Biomedical Science Careers Program’s annual fundraising ceremony. He was honored for his commitment to the organization’s mission of closing the equity gap and increasing diversity in science professions.

Anne Carlisle, PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, came to Massachusetts from Nebraska in 2015. She is studying in the Dohoon Kim lab, investigating the role of selenium in cancer cells.

A UMass Medical School research team has been awarded a National Cancer Institute grant to advance understanding of how hereditary breast and ovarian cancer genes work, and why tumors lacking these genes are sensitive to chemotherapy.

UMass Medical School postdoctoral associate Yasaman Gholamalipour, PhD, was awarded the Huntington’s Disease Society of America Berman-Topper Family HD Career Development Fellowship for 2020.

Cole M. Haynes, PhD, professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology, has received a Method to Extend Research in Time award from the National Institute on Aging for his research on repair and regeneration of mitochondria dysfunction, a mechanism associated with age-related diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Dohoon Kim, PhD, was named a 2017 Suh Kyungbae Science Foundation Young Investigator Award recipient. The accompanying $2 million, five-year grant will support research into changes in metabolic pathways that support cancer cells.

Cole Haynes, PhD, was named one of 84 faculty scholars by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Simons Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Andreas Bergmann, PhD, has received a five-year, $3.5 million Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from the National Institutes of Health.