Preview of UNC Speakers at V Foundation Scientific Symposium

H. Shelton Earp, MD
Director, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Shelton Earp is the Lineberger Professor of Cancer Research and a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pharmacology. In his role as Director at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, he supports basic, clinical and public health cancer research and care at one of the country’s premier public universities and academic medical centers. He serves as Principal Investigator of the UNC Breast Cancer SPORE and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center grants. His laboratory conducts translational breast and prostate cancer and childhood leukemia research as well as basic research on the regulation of cancer cell growth, differentiation and death. His group has discovered and studied genes involved in these cellular decisions. He has authored over 130 biomedical-research papers. Dr. Earp has received UNC School of Medicine teaching awards and chaired national review committees for the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute. He has served as President of the American Association of Cancer Institutes on the NCI Board of Scientific advisors, and on the advisory boards of ten cancer centers. His lab is supported by two NIH R01 grants and funding from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Read Dr. Earp’s research profile.

James Bear, PhD
Associate Professor, Cell and Developmental Biology

James Bear is an associate professor of cell and developmental biology in the UNC School of Medicine and a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research focuses on proteins associated with cell motility and melanoma, a key to understanding cancer metastasis. Whenever a cell needs to move, the network of tiny filaments that form its structure and provide stability are constantly being broken down and re-made. The remodeling of the cell’s cytoskeleton must happen in a matter of seconds to enable organisms to grow or wounds to heal. Bear studies how proteins called coronins alter the remodeling of the normally rigid and highly ordered cytoskeleton so that a more flexible framework can take its place. The transition to the more motile form can be problematic – flexibility is what enables cancer cells to metastasize – and Bear is intrigued by the fact the protein coronin 1C is found at very high levels in melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. He is now investigating whether the protein could serve as a marker for predicting which tumors might spread. Bear is a 2009 winner of a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist Award, one of only 50 in the United States. The Institute’s new Early Career Scientist awards identify the nation's best biomedical scientists at a critical early stage of their faculty careers, and provide them with flexible funding to develop scientific programs of exceptional merit. The award provides a a six-year grant to fund his research. Bear came to UNC in 2003 following a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. He earned his undergraduate degree in Biology from Davidson College in Davidson, NC, and his doctoral degree in Cell & Developmental Biology from Emory University. From 2001-2004, he was a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Special Fellow.

Read Dr. Bear’s research profile.

Jason Lieb, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Biology

Jason Lieb is an Associate Professor of Biology in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences and a member of both the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research is primarily in the field of epigenetics. While the general public is used to thinking about DNA as a hereditary code that only occasionally changes through mutation - the basis of the evolutionary process - the field of epigenetics focuses on DNA and its associated proteins, called chromatin. A better understanding of these fundamental processes is considered key to understanding how genetic changes that happen during cell division may lead to cancer. In particular, Lieb focuses on how information is encoded and used in the genome, specifically during transcription, DNA replication and repair, recombination, and chromosome segregation. While studying how these processes work in simple organisms, Lieb is also working to develop new technologies and concepts that can be applied to the treatment of patients. Using FAIRE (Formaldehyde-Assisted Isolation of Regulatory Elements), a method developed by his laboratory, his group can isolate and identify unpackaged regions of DNA across the whole genome. This information is valuable because when DNA is unpackaged, or "open" it indicates that the underlying information is being used by the cell. This analysis is a promising method for typing breast cancer tumors more specifically, a process that is the first step to more targeted, personalized treatment. Lieb came to UNC in 2002 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. He earned his undergraduate degree in biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his PhD in genetics at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a winner of the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement at UNC Chapel Hill and, has received a number of additional awards and honors.

Read Dr. Lieb’s research profile.