News

Risa Gearhart-Serna, a predoctoral student in the lab of Gayathri Devi, PhD, Associate Professor in Surgical Sciences, has been selected to receive the Duke Environmental Health Scholars (EHS) award for her project "Identifying Aggressive Breast Cancer Outcome Correlations with Environmental Contaminant Exposure: A Geospatial Analysis Project Using North Carolina as a Model."

Gayathri Devi, PhD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, was an invited speaker at the Annual Geographical Management of Cancer Health Disparities Program (GMaP) symposium this morning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Public Health. Dr. Devi presented in the panel on peer support and community resources related to Transdisciplinary Science to Advance the Elimination of Cancer Health Disparities.

Georgia Tomaras, PhD, Professor in Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, has been elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Tomaras was one of 96 new fellows chosen worldwide through a highly selective peer-review process. Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology represent all subspecialties of the microbial sciences, and are elected based on their record of originality, leadership, and contributions to the field of microbiology.

Under the leadership of Kent Weinhold, PhD, Chief of Surgical Sciences, the Duke Immune Profiling Core will assist in a trial investigating the efficacy of radiotherapy and immunotherapy as treatment options for patients with high-risk soft-tissue sarcoma.

Five faculty members from the Duke Department of Surgery have been selected to participate in the 2018 Duke Leadership Development for Researchers (LEADER) program sponsored by the Duke University School of Medicine Office of Faculty Development.

Duke Surgery’s participants include the following members:

Researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute have led an effort to develop a more accurate way to gauge the incidence of HIV infections in large populations, which will improve research and prevention strategies worldwide.

Georgia Tomaras, PhD, Professor of Surgery, and David Montefiori, PhD, Professor of Surgery, of the Division of Surgical Sciences, are among the world’s most cited researchers in microbiology according to a report by Clarivate Analytics.

Gayathri R. Devi, PhD, Associate Professor in Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, has been invited as the Martin and Winifred Ehlers Visiting Professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

 

An abstract resulting from the joint collaboration between Surgical Sciences faculty member Gayathri Devi, PhD, and Kevin Williams, PhD, North Carolina Central University, was recently presented by Helen Oladapo, PhD, at the 10th Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved.

Investigational therapy directly kills tumor cells and unmasks them to the body’s defenses

An investigational therapy using modified poliovirus to attack cancer tumors appears to unleash the body’s own capacity to fight malignancies by activating an inflammation process that counter’s the ability of cancer cells to evade the immune system.