Friday, September 14, 2012

Next Week's DSS - Dr. R. Daniel Beauchamp

The next Distinguished Scientist Seminar at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine will be presented by Dr. R. Daniel Beauchamp, the John Clinton Foshee Distinguished Professor & Chair of Surgery, Chair of the Section of Surgical Sciences, and Surgeon-in-Chief of Vanderbilt University Hospital. He has also served on the faculty at Vanderbilt since 1994.

Dr. Beauchamp's talk, titled “Attacking EMT in Colorectal Cancer,” will take place on Sept. 20, 2012, at 4 p.m. in the Medical Sciences Building auditorium on USA's main campus. The lecture honors the memory of Dr. Valentina Grishko, associate professor of orthopaedics and cell biology and neuroscience at USA who recently died of colon cancer.

Dr. Beauchamp holds joint appointments as professor in the departments of cell and developmental biology and cancer biology. He also serves as deputy director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.

Dr. Beauchamp has two active R01 grants from NIH, and leads one of the main projects in the GI Cancer SPORE. His primary area of research interest has been in colorectal carcinogenesis, the biology of cancer cell invasion and metastasis, and in the identification of novel molecular biomarkers and therapeutic targets in colorectal and other alimentary tract malignancies.

His research applies DNA microarray and proteomic technology to identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets in human colorectal cancer samples. Dr. Beauchamp also uses molecular genetics, chemical biology and cell biological approaches to examine mechanistic questions in cancer biology in both cell culture and mouse models. In addition to the basic cancer research, Dr. Beauchamp works in collaboration with his medical oncology and radiation oncology colleagues to accrue cancer patients to approved clinical trials.

He has trained and mentored numerous junior faculty members, physician scientist fellows, medical students, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in his laboratory.

Dr. Beauchamp is one of the few surgeon members of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI). He has a B.S. degree from Texas Tech University and a M.D. degree from University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

For more information on Dr. Beauchamp’s research, click here.