Welcoming Anu!

We are excited to welcome Anuradha "Anu" Soundararajan to our research team. Anu obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Madras in 2000, where she was recognized with the award for Best Outgoing Student for her college. After earning a Masters degree in medical physics from Anna University then professional experience as a Medical Physicist at the Cancer Institute in India, Anu pursued and recently completed a PhD in Medical Diagnostic Physics from the Department of Radiology at UTHSCSA. William “Bill” Phillips and Beth Goins were mentors to Anu, whose doctoral thesis project related to Chemo-Radionuclide Therapy with 186-Re labeled Liposomal Doxorubicin in combination with Radiofrequency Ablation for Effective Treatment of Head and Neck Cancer. Anu brings specific new strength to our research program in the area of Molecular Imaging. Her long term career goals include applied academic research for cancer using genetically engineered mouse models, imaging, and image-guided therapies. Welcome, Anu!

Our Sincerest Thanks to Mei

We sincerely thank consultant Mei Zhang for our tutorial on advanced mouse ultrasound imaging this past week. Mei is a clinical and preclinical ultrasonographer with a special gift as a teacher. Her thoughtful on site training makes it possible for us to better determine the response of childhood rhabdomyosarcomas to novel targeted therapies. We are so grateful to you, Mei. Charles, Aoife and the Keller Lab Team.

CIBC Workshop

Charles and Suresh attended a workshop for the Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute of the University of Utah this past week. Our lab is a Tier 1 collaborator for the NIH/NCRR grant that supports the CIBC (P41RR012553). We are excited about the tools made available by CIBC that enhance our study of childhood cancers, particularly Seg3D and Jens Krüger's new ImageVis3D. Staying an extra day, Suresh also mastered snowboarding... a great trip altogether!

Suresh's Paper accepted to 'Molecular Imaging'

Congratulations to Suresh who muscle injury paper was accepted just yesterday to Molecular Imaging. This paper on near-infrared imaging of tissue damage and repair was also co-authored by Carlo Martinez of the Shireman lab. Stay tuned for potential cover art!

[shown above right: cobra of the genus from which the cardiotoxin venom is derived that is used experimentally to create very small amounts of injury in muscle. Dataset from digimorph.org, and rendering by Suresh Prajapati]

[ UPDATE: (3/5/2008) Suresh's paper is now published! ]

Tohru's work with the Nishihara lab is accepted to 'Differentiation'

Congratulations to Tohru, whose work on the muscle microenvironment was accepted today to the journal, Differentiation. Drs. Ishiguro, Yamanouchi, and Nishihara co-author this exciting work. We are excited to have Tohru as part of our team, especially as we delve deeper into muscle stem cell (satellite cell) biology which underlies the formation of certain types of rhabdomyosarcoma.

Stay tuned for another announcement once Tohru's paper is published!

Brain Tumor Society funds Medulloblastoma Study

We are the fortunate recipients of a two year grant from The National Brain Tumor Society for our study, "Proteasome Inhibitor-Mediated Reversal of Shh-Driven Tumorigenesis". We are both excited and grateful to join the NBTS mission - to find a cure for brain tumors. The annual meeting today was a terrific way for NBTS to share their projects and collaborative ideas.

[note: the graphic to the right was taken from www.braintumor.org/, which announces that the Brain Tumor Society and the National Brain Tumor Foundation have merged. ]

Two Presentations at the South Padre Symposium

Hunter and Jinu gave terrific presentations at the South Padre Symposium on Cell Signaling. Mandy was a co-first author of the talk presented by Hunter. A lot of good feedback and new ideas were discussed. Special kudos to Jinu for what was deemed a very good demonstration of bedside to benchtop and back for his experimental therapeutics work.

[ pictured above: the participants of the Symposium. Keller lab members are highlighted by yellow arrows. ]