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New York, NY – April 24, 2009 – On Tuesday, March 24th, a large and enthusiastic audience of students and faculty at the New York College of Podiatric Medicine was privileged to attend a special preclinical lecture given by internationally-known molecular biologist James B. Hicks, Ph.D., Research Professor and Director of the Women’s Cancer Genomics Initiative at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. In his lecture at NYCPM, given as part of the first-year molecular biology/molecular genetics course, and entitled “Genomic and Epigenomic Approaches to Cancer Diagnosis”, Dr. Hicks offered an overview of the role of chromosomal deletions and duplications in cancer and a look at some of his current research, in which he and colleagues are applying genome-wide microarray strategies to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers in breast, ovarian and cervical cancer.
Dr. Hicks, best known for his work on yeast genetics and moveable DNA elements in the 1970’s and 1980’s, discovered DNA transformation in yeast with Dr. Gerald Fink, and founded the yeast and plant groups at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, along with coworkers Jeff Strathern and Amar Klar, where they worked out the molecular details of mating type switching in yeast. In the course of his career, Dr. Hicks has co-founded seven start-up biotech companies, and was a serial entrepreneur in the health sciences until returning to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2004, where he began his current work collaborating with Dr. Mike Wigler on the genomics of breast cancer.
Caption:
Pictured at NYCPM after Dr. Hicks’s lecture are (left to right) Kenneth H. Astrin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Metabolic Sciences, and Director of Biochemistry and Genetics; S. William Sigler, Executive Vice-President; Dr. Hicks; Michael J. Trepal, D.P.M., Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean, and Professor of Surgical Sciences; Eileen Daly Chusid, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Dean of Pre-Clinical Sciences, and Director of Institutional Research; Louis L. Levine, President & CEO; and Stephen Alchermes, D.P.M., an alumnus of NYCPM.
