WSU Honors College Welcomes Chemist Cliff Berkman to Discuss Targeting and Treating Cancer
PULLMAN, Wash.— Renowned researcher and chemistry professor Cliff Berkman will present “A New Approach to Targeting and Treating Cancer” as the second Washington State University Honors College Distinguished Lecture Series presentation on Monday, Oct. 21. The lecture is set for 6:30 p.m. in the Honors Hall Lounge and is open to the public at no charge.
The series is hosted by the Honors College and its Honors Student Advisory Council (HSAC). There will be six lectures this year—three in fall and three in spring.
“We want to introduce students and the community to the outstanding accomplishments of WSU faculty and the to the impact of their work,” says Dean M. Grant Norton. “Cliff Berkman is well respected in his field for his research and teaching.”
He has been recognized in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers; as U.S. Professor of the Year Nominee, CASE & Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and holds the Edward R. Meyer Professorship at WSU.
Prostate cancer, says Berkman, is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and second leading cause of cancer death in American men. “Our group at WSU has developed a Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA) that has been described as an ‘ideal biomarker’ for prostate cancer because of its restricted expression mainly to prostate cancer cells, which increases with late-stage, androgen-independent, and metastatic prostate cancer.
“Endothelial-expression of PSMA in the neovasculature of a variety of non-prostatic solid malignancies has raised the prospect of its use as a biomarker during angioneogenesis. As a consequence, PSMA has gained significant attention as a biomolecular target for imaging and therapeutic applications. Various chemical scaffolds have been developed as inhibitors of the enzymatic activity of PSMA, some of which have been further pursued as PSMA-targeting molecules for various diagnostic and therapeutic payloads. We have found that phosphoramidate-based peptidomimetic PSMA inhibitor scaffolds selectively and rapidly penetrate prostate tumor cells through the internalization of the PSMA enzyme-inhibitor complex first into early endosomes and then lysosomes. These findings support our development of targeted chemotherapeutic and theranostic strategies.
“This presentation will cover our progress in the development of small-molecule PSMA-targeted imaging and therapeutic platforms.”
Berkman obtained his B.A. in chemistry from Lake Forest University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Loyola University of Chicago. After two postdoctoral positions at IGEN Research Institute and Seattle Biomedical Research institute, he joined the faculty of San Francisco State University. In 2007, he came to WSU as a professor in the Department of Chemistry.
The third fall lecture in the series is set for Nov. 18, featuring WSU Regents Professor of Music Greg Yasnitsky, composer, saxophone expert, and director of the School of Music.
MEDIA: M. Grant Norton, Dean, WSU Honors College, 509-335-4505
Linda Howell, Academic Coordinator, WSU Honors College, 509-335-7801, linda.howell@wsu.edu