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Dr. Myon Hee Lee, Department of Medicine, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University| “Worm sheds light on stem cell biology in humans”
- Throughout their lifespan, stem cells make several critical fate decisions: the initial decision between self-renewal (remaining pluripotent) and differentiation, and then the subsequent decision between whether to continue in the differentiation path or to return to an undifferentiated state, i.e., to engage in a form of dedifferentiation. Defects in cellular machineries governing differentiation decisions can result in loss of a specific cell type, overpopulation of undifferentiated cells, or overt growth of cancer cells. Over the past decade, the molecular mechanisms related to the initial decision have been described in major model organisms. However, an understanding of the underlying determinants of the subsequent decisions is vague at best. The long-term research objectives are to elucidate the mechanisms that cause differentiating cells to return to an undifferentiated state, and to develop an animal model to interrogate these mechanisms in the living organism. A molecular understanding of this cellular event holds promise for the development of powerful tools in stem cell biology, regenerative medicine, and oncotherapy.
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Dr. Jae Won Jung, Brody School of Medicine| “Segmentation of cardiac structures for breast cancer radiotherapy”
- Quantifying radiation dose to cardiac substructures is important for research on the etiology and prevention of complications following radiotherapy. In this presentation we demonstrate the application of our atlas-based and deep learning-based automatic segmentation method to breast cancer radiotherapy plans for generating radiation doses in support of late effects research.
