Faculty Member Johanna Joyce

Johanna Joyce, of the Sloan-Kettering Institute's Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, has been named the first incumbent of a Geoffrey Beene Junior Faculty Chair. Dr. Joyce and the members of her laboratory are working to define and understand the mechanisms used by cancer cells to hijack the functions of normal host cells in different tumor microenvironments and to apply this knowledge to develop targeted cancer therapies that can disrupt these tumor-host interactions.

Dr. Joyce holds a BA in genetics from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and a PhD in biology from the University of Cambridge in England. While working towards her PhD, she did research in clinical and molecular genetics at Cambridge. Prior to joining Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2004, Dr. Joyce was a postdoctoral fellow in the department of biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, where her research centered on the mechanisms by which cathepsin proteases promote tumor angiogenesis and invasion.

The Geoffrey Beene Junior Faculty Chairs are designed to provide funding to outstanding young researchers from across the institution at a crucial early stage in their careers. They are part of the Geoffrey Beene Cancer Research Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, a new initiative funded by a gift from the estate of the late fashion designer Geoffrey Beene. The gift will provide endowed support for two senior and four junior chairs in addition to funding a range of other activities and programs.