The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, has added five new translational cancer researchers to its staff in recent months.
Located at 45th Street and Dewey Avenue, the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center is scheduled to open in 2017. The recruits hail from some of the nation’s top scientific and medical institutions. Collectively, they bring more than $5 million in cancer research funding to Nebraska. All have begun their work at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center during the past four months.
The $323 million dollar Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center – the largest construction project ever on the medical center campus – will create approximately 1,200 jobs at the medical center alone, plus thousands of others in construction and related industries. In total, the project will provide 4,657 new jobs to the metro area, infusing $537 million annually into the economy on an ongoing basis.
The new recruits are:
Nick Woods, Ph.D. — Recruited from H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL, Dr. Woods joined the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on Oct. 1. He has a $400,000 National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant in breast cancer. A Fairfield, NE native and cancer survivor, Dr. Woods’ primary research interest is systems biology based analysis of protein-protein interactions networks associated with cancer signaling pathways to identify novel targets for cancer therapies.
Michael Green, Ph.D. — Recruited from Stanford University, Dr. Green joined the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on Nov. 1. He has a $195,000 grant funded by The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Dr. Green works to identify and understand the genetic alterations that give rise to lymphoma and allow it to evade the immune system.
Amar Singh, Ph.D. — Recruited from Vanderbilt University, Dr. Singh joined the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on Oct. 1. He has a $1.65 million National Institutes of Health grant in colon cancer, and brought one other Ph.D. level researcher with him to Nebraska. Dr. Singh’s research focuses on understanding the role of the tight junction proteins, claudins, in the regulation of barrier function, colonic inflammation and neoplastic transformation and growth in correlation with the EGF receptor signaling.
Punita Dhawan, Ph.D. — Recruited from Vanderbilt University, Dr. Dhawan joined the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on Oct. 1. She has a $950,000 Veteran’s Affairs Health Grant in colon cancer, and recruited one additional Ph.D. postdoctoral fellow from Chicago. Dr. Dhawan focuses her research on claudins, metastasis, tumorigenesis, signal transduction and trafficking, and cell death and differentiation.
Rebecca Oberley-Deegan, Ph.D. — Recruited from National Jewish Hospital in Denver, Dr. Oberley-Deegan joined the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on Aug. 1. She has a $1.65 million National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute grant in prostate cancer. Dr. Oberley-Deegan’s research examines the role of oxidative stress and inflammation in the context of radiation and cancer biology.
For more information about the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, visit www.fredandpamelabuffettcancercenter.com.