GSDM Hosts Symposium On The Etiology And Pathogenesis Of Oral Cancer

Dr. Ann Marie Egloff presents at the EPOC ARC Symposium.

On Tuesday, October 20, 2015, faculty, researchers, and students gathered in Room 714 of the Evans Biomedical Research Center at 650 Albany Street (X-building) for a symposium hosted by the Etiology and Pathogenesis of Oral Cancer (EPOC) Affinity Research Collaborative (ARC). This Symposium offered an opportunity to discuss some of the projects the ARC has been working on over the past year, and to discuss areas for future growth. There was a special emphasis at the meeting on presentations by trainees or junior faculty.

Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Molecular & Cell Biology, Dr. Maria Kukuruzinska opened the symposium with remarks on the purpose and accomplishments of the ARC. Dr. Ann Marie Egloff, Research Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, gave the keynote address on Translational Research in Head and Neck Cancer: The Infrastructure Imperative. Dr. Egloff discussed the importance of strengthening the infrastructure at Boston University for specimen collection, annotation and utilization in order to facilitate robust and cutting-edge oral cancer research.

Over the course of the afternoon, five other researchers presented on their oral cancer projects. The projects and presenters were:

  • Khalid Alamoud, DScD 19; Research Assistant, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology. Oncogenic Roles of N-glycosylation in Oral Cancer.
  • Vinay Kartha, PhD Candidate; Research Assistant, Computational Biomedicine. Mining for markers of tumor initiation and progression in oral squamous cell carcinoma.
  • Gokhan Baris Ozdener, DDS, MSc, DSc, DMD Candidate; Post-Doctoral Associate, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology. Determination of cell uptake pathways for tumor inhibitor lysyl oxidase propeptide.
  • Jennifer Snyder-Cappione, PhD; Research Assistant Professor, Microbiology; Director, Flow Cytometry Core Facility. Immune Cell Exhaustion in Oral Cancer.
  • Manish Bais, PhD; Research Associate Professor, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.Orthotopic mouse models to study in vivo function of LSD1 and other key regulators of OSCC.

The EPOC ARC is an Affinity Research Collaborative co-funded by GSDM and the Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research. ARCs work to enhance their research mission in graduate and post-graduate programs, develop current and new institutional research cores, provide educational opportunities for all Evans Center members, and create collaboration opportunities.

“The EPOC ARC symposium certainly was a productive and beneficial event that served to further enhance its goals,” said Dean Jeffrey W. Hutter. “I would like to thank all those who attended the symposium, andwho presented, especially Dr. Egloff for her outstanding keynote address.”