Partners
The Princeton Physical Sciences-Oncology Center is a "virtual" center with research partnerships established between the following institutions:
University of California at San Francisco
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
The Princeton PS-OC Investigators bring together expertise in physics and the physical laws of cell behavior, microfabrication techniques, theoretical modeling as well as a deep understanding of the mechanism of evolution in cancer cells.
Princeton's Robert Austin, Professor of Physics and Director of the Princeton PS-OC, leads the team using a physics-based approach to understanding the laws that govern how cancer evolves.
Research conducted by the team utilizes microfabrication techiques - experimental microhabitats developed jointly between the labs of Austin and Princeton Professor James Sturm (Electrical Engineering and Director of the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials).
Also at Princeton, Salvatore Torquato (Professor, Department of Chemistry and Director, Princeton Center for Theoretical Science) is involved in testing new hypotheses and building computer models to help predict cancer behavior.
Thea Tlsty, the center's Senior co-Investigator and Professor of Pathology at University of California, San Francisco brings her expertise in breast cancer research to the team. Specifically, Dr. Tlsty directs her laboratory to use genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cytogenetic techniques to study the cell biology of tumor cell formation and progression in human tissue.
Robert Getzenberg, Professor and Director of Research of the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a co-investigator on the project conducts research on one of the hallmarks of the cancer cell - the alteration of nuclear structure in cancer cells as compared to normal cells, and the role the nuclear matrix and nuclear scaffolding may play (both directly and indirectly) in transformation.
Beverly Emerson, Professor of Regulatory Biology Laboratory of the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, brings expertise in transcriptional regulation in differentiation and disease. The Emerson laboratory investigates the mechanisms by which genes are transcriptionally regulated and how these processes can malfunction to cause disease.
The team also utilizes the Genome Sequencing Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This core facility is led by PSOC co-Investigator Nader Pourmand, Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and Director of the Sequencing Center at UCSC's Baskin School of Engineering. The Sequencing Center provides the specialized equipment and techniques for using sequencing methods to better understand novel cancer pathways at the single cell level.