Summer 2009 News@MSKCC

Memorial Sloan-Kettering's 30th annual Academic Convocation honored 31 students receiving PhD degrees for work conducted in Center laboratories; younger Memorial Sloan-Kettering physicians, scientists, and postdoctoral research fellows; and established clinicians and investigators from the Center and beyond.

Findings from a new, collaborative study led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, show that by administering an already-approved class of drugs in a novel way may be effective in the treatment of retinoblastoma -- the most common type of eye tumor in children.

New research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering sheds light on a genetic function that gives breast cancer cells the ability to survive and spread to the bone years after treatment has been administered.

A new study by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering reveals the genetic underpinnings of what causes lung cancer to quickly metastasize, or spread, to the brain and the bone -- the two most prominent sites of lung cancer relapse.

In a study led by Memorial Sloan-Kettering physician-scientists, patients operated on for gastrointestinal stromal tumors lived longer without their disease coming back if they received the drug imatinib as an adjuvant therapy after surgery.

Dinshaw J. Patel, a Member in Sloan-Kettering Institute's Structural Biology Program, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences at its 146th annual meeting.

Jennifer A. Zallen, a member of the Developmental Biology Program in the Sloan-Kettering Institute, has been selected by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an Early Career Scientist.

The American Society for Therapeutic Radiology Oncology has selected Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center neurosurgeon Philip Gutin, MD, as its Honorary Member for 2009.