Richard A. Scott, MD Lecture Series

The Scott Lecture Series was created as an educational platform in 2001 to appeal to the medical community of Northwestern University. It is funded under the generous bequest of Richard A. Scott, MD, a Northwestern University Medical School alum. After Dr. Scott passed away in August 2000, his wife, Anne Lesak Scott, and family established the CGM lecture series in honor of Dr. Scott’s lifelong interest in research.

Details about our most recent lecture are below. A video of the event will be available soon.

Spring 2009 Scott Lecture Series

Communicating with Hedgehogs: Signaling in Development & Disease

Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 4:00 pm

Matthew Scott
Professor of Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Bioengineering
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator
Stanford University School of Medicine

This event was co-sponsored by the Integrated Graduate Program’s Lectures in the Life Sciences.

Animal development is controlled by an exquisite interplay of regulators that shape cells and control the temporal and spatial activation of genes. Signaling systems that evolved more than half a billion years ago allow cell-cell communication events that lead to proper formation of tissues and organs. Damage to such signaling systems can lead to birth defects, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Hedgehog (Hh) signaling, first discovered in flies, is employed in the formation of nearly all human tissues and organs. Mutations affecting Hh signaling components can lead to cancer and birth defects, including the most common human cancer, basal cell carcinoma of the skin. Much remains to be learned about mechanisms through which the Hh protein signal is received and interpreted, and how Hh signaling relates to normal development and cancer. The talk will focus on mechanisms of Hh signal transduction, particularly in the context of cerebellum development and tumors, including the role of an antenna for the signal and gene expression events governed by the signal.

Professor Scott started his own laboratory at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1983, where he was subsequently appointed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. There, he and his colleagues investigated fundamental molecular mechanisms of development, including gene regulation and cell-cell signaling. In 1990, he and his wife Margaret Fuller, also a developmental geneticist, moved to Stanford University to join the newly created Department of Developmental Biology and the Department of Genetics. The research on developmental regulation expanded to explore relationships between normal embryonic development and what goes wrong in birth defects, cancer, and neurodegenerative disease. The Scott lab identified a key genetic cause of the most common human cancer and of the most common childhood malignant brain tumor. The genes and proteins involved constitute parts of the half-billion year old regulatory machinery that controls growth and shape of animals. Current projects include investigations of signaling systems, cancer and neurodegeneration, and the neural control of insulin release and growth. (Full Bio)