Rutgers' Eileen White nets $4.5-million NIH award for cancer research

NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, NJ -- Dr. Eileen White, a resident faculty member of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM), a professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Rutgers University, and an associate investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-National Cancer Institute Merit Award totaling as much as $4.5-million over 10 years.

The funding will help support White's groundbreaking research into why cancer cells continue to proliferate when normal cells eventually die. Her work has implications not only for cancer research, but for the research of such diseases as AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease) and lupus.

A limited number of the NIH Awards are made to investigators who are at the leading edge of their research field, and in an area of high priority and long-term relevance to the mission of the National Cancer Institute.

White is studying the mechanisms that cause human cells to become cancerous. Under normal circumstances, cells are programmed by their DNA to eventually commit "suicide," or apoptosis, a development that helps the body prevent unwanted cell growth. But when the mechanisms that control cell growth go awry, cancer can result.

The focus of White's research are cancer-causing genes or oncogenes found in the chromosomes of the adenovirus. These oncogenes manage to deregulate the normal cell cycle and inhibit apoptosis.

White is also an adjunct professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of NJ, and program leader at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey. White also receives substantial support for her research program from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and other grants from the NIH.