Joan S. Brugge, PhD

2008-2009 BCRF Project:
In studying processes that lead to the death of tumor cells outside their natural niches, Dr. Brugge's team discovered a fascinating process that tumor cells undergo when they lose attachment to their normal extracellular matrix 'bed' (e.g. during invasion and metastasis). Under these conditions, the tumor cells invade into other tumor cells and reside within their host cells for long periods of time before they are either ejected or killed.

During the past year the researchers completed studies that led to the publication of a report describing this process and also examined consequences of this process that might affect tumor development. They obtained evidence suggesting that the process could potentially either suppress new tumor formation or provoke tumor progression in different contexts. In the coming year, Dr. Brugge's laboratory will will add another project, to study genes and cellular processes that regulate tumor cell invasion and another to identify a potential novel stem cell population.

Bio:
Joan Brugge joined the faculty of the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School in July 1997 and became the Chair of this department in 2004. A graduate of Northwestern University, she did her graduate work at the Baylor College of Medicine, completing her PhD in 1975. During her postdoctoral training at the University of Colorado she isolated the protein coded for the viral and cellular forms of the src gene. These proteins were the first viral/cellular oncogene products to be identified, and the study of the normal and oncogenic forms of this gene product has served as a model system to investigate cellular processes that regulate normal growth and the mechanisms involved in tumor formation.

In the 15 years since that discovery, Dr. Brugge has held full professorships at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also named as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1992 Dr. Brugge left academia to help found a new company, ARIAD, to focus on research aimed at developing new drugs for asthma and allergy, cystic fibrosis, cancer, and other diseases that result from cellular regulation gone awry.

Dr. Brugge has received several awards recognizing her scientific accomplishments including an NIH Merit Award, an American Cancer Society Research Professorship and the Senior Career Recognition Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, and she has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.