March 27, 6 – 8:30 p.m. Reception at 6 p.m. Lecture at 7 p.m. Lloyd Library & Museum
Reservations Required.
Leading cancer researchers Drs. Susan Band Horwitz and Susan Mooberry discuss their quest for treatments for breast cancer. Natural products continue to provide effective new leads for many types of cancer including breast cancer. Through collaborations with medicinal chemists and evaluation of extract libraries from the National Cancer Institute from plant collections across the world, Drs. Horwitz and Mooberry search for natural products and their analogs to ultimately identify new drugs.
Susan Horwitz’s pioneering research led to the development of Taxol®, one of today’s most frequently prescribed drugs for the treatment of ovarian, breast and lung carcinomas. Horwitz and her graduate students & fellows discovered that Taxol, isolated from the yew tree, Taxus brevifolia, binds to microtubules an important component of the cellular cytoskeleton, stabilizing them, thereby leading to cell cycle arrest and subsequent tumor cell death. In addition, Taxol® has proven to be an indispensable tool for scientists interested in microtubule structure, dynamics, and function.
A recipient of the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award, Dr. Horwitz, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University with postdoctoral fellowships at Tufts University Medical School and Emory University Medical School. She is presently a Distinguished Professor and holds the Falkenstein Chair in Cancer Research in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Her work is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the NIH, the National Foundation for Cancer Research and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Noted for her impact in developing young faculty, Dr. Horwitz received the Award for Mentoring Einstein Faculty. Numerous honors and awards include: The New York Academy Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Biomedical Science, C. Chester Stock Award from Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center, the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize from Harvard Medical School, The Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research, The American Cancer Society's Medal of Honor and the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Lifetime Achievement Award in Cancer Research. She is a member of The National Academy of Sciences and of Medicine.
Susan Mooberry’s research focuses on therapies for the treatment of challenging cancers, including triple-negative breast cancers and pediatric solid tumors. During postdoctoral studies at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, she identified new classes of microtubule targeting compounds, including one class that advanced to clinical trials. In 2000, she moved to the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio where she holds the Greehey Distinguished Chair in Molecular Therapeutics. Her laboratory has expertise in the discovery and mechanisms of action of diverse microtubule targeting agents and more recently new natural product-derived compounds with activity against specific subtypes of breast and pediatric cancers.
Dr. Mooberry received her Ph.D. in pharmacology at the Medical University of South Carolina. She has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles, reviews and book chapters and holds 9 patents on new classes of drug leads. Dr. Mooberry has served on scientific review panels for national and international organizations. She is the immediate past president of the American Society for Pharmacognosy (ASP) and was elected as a Fellow of that society in 2019. She is currently the Principal Investigator of NIH and industry grants.