December Faculty Focus: Susan Sumner, PhD

December Faculty Focus: Susan Sumner, PhD

December 15, 2018 – Through the ages, science has often been in the company of poetry. They came together recently when Susan Sumner, PhD, described how she got her start in Biomarker Discovery using spectroscopic methods as an undergraduate at North Carolina State University (NCSU): “I found it exciting to envision molecules dancing in multidimensional space in response to applied physical factors such as magnets, radio frequency pulses, or electric fields.”

Starving Cells May Lead to New Cancer Treatments

Starving Cells May Lead to New Cancer Treatments

November 20, 2018 – Nutrient availability regulates cell metabolism, growth, and survival. When nutrients are in short supply, cells can pause their growth or even eliminate themselves through a process known as programmed cell death, thereby protecting the health of the organism as a whole. If nutrient deprivation happens at certain critical periods, such as during the rapid growth of the embryonic brain, severe developmental consequences can arise (this is why proper maternal nutrition is so important). In contrast, harnessing the innate ability of cells to enter programmed cell death is an important strategy in cancer treatment.

Nutrition Is a Hard Science

Nutrition Is a Hard Science

November 20, 2018 – There have been a lot of questions about the reliability of nutritional science. We should respond with an assertive statement: Nutrition is a hard science. By just about any comparison, much of what is known about nutrition and the methods that have built that knowledge is as robust as classical physics, biochemistry and other basic sciences generally recognized as rigorous.