People
Post-doctoral fellow earns Young Investigator Grant
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| Mascaux |
A young researcher at the University of Colorado Cancer Center believes she could find a simple, noninvasive test that would diagnose lung cancer in its very earliest stages or even while it's still pre-cancerous.
Celine Mascaux, M.D, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, has identified several molecular changes in patients with the earliest stages of lung cancer. She also has found that these markers differ between smokers and nonsmokers as well as between men and women. Most importantly, she has found biomarkers that indicate the presence of lesions at low risk of turning cancerous from those that were at high risk or were already invasive cancer.
Mascaux is now testing a much larger number of patients from the United States and Belgium to verify her findings. She hopes that she could find the same molecules in patients' sputum or blood, which could lead to the development of a simple, noninvasive screening test to detect lung cancer in its earliest stages.
In recognition of her work, Mascaux was named a winner of the prestigious National Lung Cancer Partnership Young Investigator Grant. Mascaux, 36, is one of just six young researchers worldwide to receive this award.
"This award will help bring attention to my work that will attract others to collaborate," says Mascaux, who won an International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer Fellowship Award in 2009 to come to Colorado.
Lung cancer is the most deadly form of cancer, killing more people each year than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined. Currently, there are no general screenings that can detect lung cancer at its earliest stages. Lung cancer patients generally have only a 15 percent chance of surviving five years, compared with a 60 percent to 80 percent five-year survival rate for patients whose cancers can be surgically removed at an early stage.
Professor wins award for book on animal behavior
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| Breed |
A book co-edited by Michael Breed, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has received the PROSE award for Multivolume Reference (Science), for the book "Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior" published by Academic Press.
The Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers announced the winners of the 2010 American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (The PROSE Awards) at a Feb. 3 event in Washington, D.C.
The PROSE Awards annually recognize the best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals and electronic content in over 40 categories.
Breed's co-editor is Janice Moore, a professor at Colorado State University.
The comprehensive work covers not only the usual topics such as communication, learning, sexual selection, navigation and the history of the field, but also emerging topics in cognition, animal welfare, conservation and applications of animal behavior. The large section on animal cognition brings together many of the world's experts on the subject to provide a thorough overview of this rapidly developing area.
Dropping names ...
Clark M. Thenhaus, a lecturer in architecture at the University of Colorado Denver, is a category winner in the d3 Housing Tomorrow 2011 international architectural design competition, in the Single Family/Modular category. His Farm House has an elastic skin that collects, stores and distributes water to irrigation infrastructures. The elastic skin swells and shrinks relative to water intake, thus indexing the hydrological cycles and creating a changing building form and texture. Visit the d3 Housing Tomorrow website. ... The department of landscape architecture at the University of Colorado Denver was represented among the design sessions last week at the ProGreen Expo in Denver: John Lanterman, instructor, presented "Urban Agriculture Trends and  Opportunities," Robby Layton, lecturer, presented "Landscapes and Community Health," and Leila Tolderlund, instructor, presented "Living Wall Design in Colorado." ... David Schmidt, professor emeritus in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, recently published "Modern Flight Dynamics" (McGraw-Hill) a text for senior-level undergraduates and first-year graduate students in aerospace and mechanical engineering.
Want to suggest a colleague — or yourself — for People? Please e-mail information to Jay.Dedrick@cu.edu
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