Katerina Politi, PhD and Don Nguyen, PhD, members of the Signal Transduction Research Program at Yale Cancer Center (YCC), have received a 5-year, nearly $4 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to support Lung Cancer research. The award is to help study the relationship between drug resistance and metastasis as part of the NCI's Patient-Derived Models Consortium (PDMC).
The goal of the PDMC is to improve patient-derived models for basic cancer research that may inform the development of novel cancer therapies. The multidisciplinary teams working together across the PDMC include researchers with expertise in sample procurement, patient-derived models, cancer biology, and computational science. Additionally, the PDMC has a unique framework for sharing data and best practices to accelerate and standardize efforts related to the use of patient-derived models across the cancer research community.
Politi studied Biology at the University of Pavia in Italy. She obtained her PhD in Genetics and Development at Columbia University. Following graduate school, Politi joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and began her work on the molecular basis of lung cancer. She continues this work at YCC as an Associate Professor of Pathology.
Nguyen received his BS in Microbiology and Immunology at McGill University. He then received his PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Rochester. Following a post-doctoral fellowship, Nguyen joined YCC as an Associate Professor of Pathology.