News

The U.S. News and World Report has ranked the Duke University School of Medicine 2nd in surgery among the best medical schools in the country. This 2nd place ranking is up considerably from the department’s 5th place ranking last year.

The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research has released its 2018 rankings of NIH funding for basic and clinical science departments, revealing that Duke Surgery ranks highest nationwide with more than $30 million in funding committed to research.

Bruce Sullenger, PhD, Joseph W. and Dorothy W. Beard Professor of Experimental Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). An NAI Fellow status is the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors.

A jagged little protein appears to be a key to how cancer stem cells differentiate and enable metastasis, according to researchers at Duke Cancer Institute and Rice University.

Rice scientists who have formed several theories on how cancer grows and spreads connected the dots for a more complete picture of tumor mechanics. At the center, they found JAG1, a ligand or small protein, that interacts with a signaling pathway critical to regulating the fate of cells.

Duke Surgery researchers are bridging the gap between basic research and clinical application, moving gene therapy from the bench to the bedside

Three faculty members from the Duke Department of Surgery have been named among the most highly cited researchers of 2018 in a recent report from Clarivate Analytics. This year, the report recognized over 6,000 researchers as having the top 1% of citations in Web of Science. Highly cited articles indicate scientific excellence and exceptional research performance. Researchers with a high number of citations are considered significantly impactful in their field.

Gayathri Devi, PhD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, was an invited speaker at the 2nd National Cancer Institute Symposium on Cancer Health Disparities held October 25-26, 2018, at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The goal of this symposium was to highlight recent advances in our understanding of the causes of cancer health disparities in the Unites States and globally.

Separate awards will advance genomic medicine and breast cancer research
 

In separate awards from the National Institutes of Health, Duke University School of Medicine researchers will advance genomic medicine initiatives and develop a model for how breast cancer tumors begin and grow.

The genome studies include two grants from the National Human Genome Research Institute, which is part of NIH, that will total about $9 million over five years. 

Congratulations to Yuting P. Chiang, MD, General Surgery Research Fellow, and mentor Dawn E. Bowles, PhD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Division of Surgical Sciences, on receiving the Pfizer-NCBiotech Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gene Therapy (Pfizer-GTF). Their proposal, entitled Evolving Inside the Box: A Novel Approach to Generate AAV Vector for Cardiac Gene Therapy Applications, will be funded in full.

Photo: An illustration depicts a genome editing tool bound to a DNA helix. New genome editing tools can substitute single “letters” in the DNA code without changing the surrounding DNA structure. (Credit: XVIVO Photo)