Where Ideas Grow

5th MINA J. BISSELL AWARD

Brain in Development and Disease  

HONORING THE BRILLIANT MIND OF MARIA DE SOUSA

 

13 April 2022 | i3S, Porto

 

Welcome
The Mina J. Bissell Award is intended to distinguish personalities who have contributed to the advancement of science. The award is given every three years to a scientist who, like Dr. Mina Bissell, has a devoted, successful, lifetime research career that has transformed our perception of a topic. The Mina J. Bissell Award can be given posthumously.

The Award
As the crowning conclusion of a Symposium on Frontiers in Cell Migration in Cancer, organized by the University of Porto Graduate Program in Areas of Basic and Applied Biology (GABBA) in 2008, the Directors of the Program decided to honor Mina J. Bissell, the keynote speaker at the Symposium, by creating an award with her name, on January 21st, 2008.
A small sculpture in the form of a medal designed by the Portuguese sculptor Zulmiro de Carvalho consists of an outer circle with a number of mobile rectangular units that enable the outer circle to stand in various positions, a fitting symbol of the lifetime contributions made by Mina J. Bissell to strengthen the importance of context in the development of cancer. The outer circle can be said to represent the context.
Mina J. Bissell was the first scientist to receive the award and she gave the first Mina J. Bissell Award to a non-scientist woman, Leonor Beleza, president of the Champalimaud Foundation, an institution dedicated to medical research, with a special focus on cancer (2008). Subsequent recipients of the Award were Judah Folkman (2011), David Lyden (2014), and Maria de Sousa (2017). 
In honor of the scientific legacy of Maria de Sousa, this conference brings together close friends and mentees with a focus on immunology, cancer, and the brain. The meeting will highlight the achievements for “dramatically changing a field” by Rui Costa as this year’s winner of the Mina J. Bissell Award, an award bestowed on Maria herself.

 

Rui Costa, DVM, PhD, GABBA alumnus, is Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, and Director and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, NY (USA). He is an elected member of EMBO and the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Costa is an expert in the brain circuitry that underlies movement. His studies focus on the circuit mechanisms underlying the generation of spontaneous movements, and the organization and refinement of movements during learning. These studies have implications for understanding and treating movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. In December 2021, it was announced that Rui Costa will move to the Allen Institute in Seattle, WA (USA) as incoming President and CEO.

 

Poster download >> 

Venue

The meeting will be held at i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto.
Rua Alfredo Allen, 208; 4200-135 Porto, Portugal
Tel: +351 220 408 800 | Site: http://www.i3s.up.pt/ | E-mail: events@i3s.up.pt
GPS coordinates: 41º 10' 30.008'' N, 8º 36' 12.488'' W.
 

Program

Program | Brain in Development and Disease  
 

1:00pm - 1:30pm Registration

1:30pm - 1:45pm Remembering Maria
Manuel Sobrinho Simões, i3S/ Ipatimup, Portugal, and Fátima Carneiro, i3S/ Ipatimup, Portugal

1:45pm - 2:30pm Extracellular vesicles and particles support cell migrations from one home to another home
David Lyden, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA

2:30pm - 3:15pm Molecular mechanisms governing prefrontal cortical development and evolution
André Sousa, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

3:15pm - 4:00pm Physiologic, brain-specific regulation of disseminated tumor cell dormancy
Cyrus Ghajar, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA

4:00pm - 4:30pm Coffee break

4:30pm - 5:15pm Immunity in context: Tissue-specific innate immune barriers to metastasis
Ana Correia, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal

5:15pm - 6:00pm Why don’t we get more cancer?
Mina Bissell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA

6:00pm - 7:00pm Generating, reinforcing and refining actions
Rui Costa, Columbia University and Allen Institute, USA

The MJB Award
Mina Bissell, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA

Speakers

Mina J. BISSELL, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, USA
Mina J. Bissell is a Distinguished Senior Scientist, (the highest rank bestowed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), serves as Senior Advisor to the Laboratory Director on Biology. She is Faculty of four Graduate Groups at UC Berkeley: Comparative Biochemistry, Endocrinology, Molecular Toxicology, and Bioengineering (UCSF/UCB joint program). She has challenged several established paradigms and pioneered the field of the tumor microenvironment. Using mammary gland and breast cancer her body of work has provided the foundation for the current recognition of the pivotal role that extracellular matrix (ECM) signaling plays in the regulation of gene expression in both normal and malignant cells. Her laboratory pioneered the use of 3D organoids and techniques that allowed her to prove her signature phrase that after conception, “phenotype is dominant over genotype.”
Bissell earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from Harvard College where she received the medal of American Institute of Chemistry doctorate in microbiology and molecular genetics from Harvard Medical School, won an American Cancer Society fellowship for her postdoctoral studies, and soon after joined LBNL. She was the founding Director of the Cell and Molecular Biology Division and later the Associate Laboratory Director for all Life Sciences at Berkeley Lab where she recruited outstanding scientists and developed a strong program in cell and molecular biology and breast cancer.
Bissell published more than 400 publications and is one of the most sought-after speakers in the field. She has received numerous honors and awards, which include: U.S. Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award, AACR’s G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award, the Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award, Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Brinker Award, BCRF Foundation’s Jill Rose Award, Berkeley Lab’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Prize, American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor, MD Anderson Cancer Center’s highest honor – the Ernst W. Bertner Award, the Honorary Medal from the Signaling Societies in Germany, ASCB’s highest honor – the E.B. Wilson Medal, and the 2017 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research. She is the recipient of the 2020 Canada Gairdner International Award.  She has received the 2019 Weizmann Women & Science Award from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the American Philosophical Society (APS) Jonathan E. Rhoads Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Medicine. In 2019, she also received the Burkitt Medal from Trinity College Medical School in Dublin, Ireland, and the Doctor of Science honoris causa from Western University in London, Ontario. In her honor, the University of Porto, Portugal established the Mina J. Bissell Award which is given every three years to a person who has dramatically changed a field. She is the recipient of Honorary Doctorates from both Pierre & Marie Curie University in Paris, France, and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Bissell is an inspiring mentor and has trained about 100 students and postdoctoral Fellows and countless undergraduates. Bissell is not only an elected Fellow of most U.S. honorary scientific academies, including the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and American Philosophical Society (APS), but she also sits on many national and international scientific boards and continues to engage in full-time research, as well as other scientific activities.  In 2021, Dr. Bissell was awarded the 2021 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Princess Takamatsu Lectureship Award.

 

Ana Luísa CORREIA, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal
Ana Luisa Correia completed her major in Applied Biology (with a specialization in Cancer Biology) at the University of Minho, in 2006. She started her career in breast cancer research in the laboratory of Fernando Schmitt (University of Minho). In 2008, Ana Luisa joined the GABBA Ph.D. program from the University of Porto, and she ventured to California to explore the role of the microenvironment in breast cell invasion at the laboratory of Dr. Mina Bissell (Lawrence Berkeley Lab, USA). In 2014, Ana Luisa started her postdoc in Dr. Mohamed Bentires-Alj’s laboratory (University of Basel, Switzerland), where she explored tissue-specific mechanisms that control progression of breast cancer from dormant to metastatic. Ana Luisa's research has redefined key concepts at the intersection of Cancer Dormancy, Inflammation, and Immunity, and resulted in a major publication in the prestigious journal Nature. Ana Luisa has been awarded a prestigious EMBO postdoctoral fellowship, 3 grants as Project Leader, and a number of international awards such as the 2021 Metastasis Research Prize, the 2022 Pfizer Oncology, and the AACR 2022 NextGen Stars Award. Ana Luisa is now a Principal Investigator at the Champalimaud Foundation, where she leads the Cancer Dormancy & Immunity Lab.

 

Rui COSTA, Columbia University and Allen Institute, Seattle, USA
Rui Costa, DVM, Ph.D., GABBA alumnus, is Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology, and Director and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia's Zuckerman Institute. He is an elected member of EMBO and the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Costa is an expert in the brain circuitry that underlies movement. His studies focus on the circuit mechanisms underlying the generation of spontaneous movements, and the organization and refinement of movements during learning. These studies have implications for understanding and treating movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.  In December 2021 it was announced that Dr. Costa will move to the Allen Institute in Seattle, WA (USA) as incoming President and CEO.

 

Cyrus GHAJAR, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA
Cyrus Ghajar is an Associate Professor and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Metastatic Microenvironments (LSM2) in Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Translational Research Program. Broadly, he is interested in how distant tissue microenvironments influence the behavior of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs). Specifically, his laboratory is working to understand how tissues like lung, liver, bone marrow, brain, and lymph node regulate survival, growth, therapeutic resistance, and immune evasion of DTCs, and how local and systemic changes awaken DTCs. His ultimate interests lie in targeting dormant DTCs to prevent and treat metastasis.

 

David LYDEN, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA
David Lyden is the Stavros Niarchos Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a pediatric neuro-oncologist. Early work in the Lyden lab resulted in several fundamental discoveries that involve the role of bone marrow-derived stem and progenitor cells in tumor vasculogenesis and in metastasis. Using pediatric and adult cancer models, Dr. Lyden and his colleagues made a pivotal discovery in the metastatic cascade revealing that tumor-secreted factors induce the formation of microenvironments in distant organs conducive to tumor cell survival and outgrowth. Remarkably, these microenvironments are generated prior to tumor cell arrival at these sites, an observation that led Dr. Lyden and his team to develop the concept of the “pre-metastatic niche”. Work in the pre-metastatic niche has been translated to clinical care leading to advances in prediction, imaging, and targeting of early metastatic disease progression. Last but not least, Dr. Lyden has performed groundbreaking work developing protocols, databases, and analytical tools to exploit the biomarker and therapeutic potential of exosomes to support cancer diagnosis and monitoring responses to treatment.

 

André SOUSA, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
André Sousa received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Porto. He then pursued his graduate studies in developmental neurobiology with NenadSestan, at the Yale School of Medicine, as a student of the GABBA program. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison. The goals of his research are to identify and characterize the molecular and cellular mechanisms governing human brain development and evolution, and to apply that knowledge towards understanding neuropsychiatric disorders. He employs a multifaceted approach that combines functional genomics with developmental and evolutionary neurobiology. Dr. Sousa was the funding President of ATG-All Time GABBAs and is a member of the executive board of the American Portuguese Biomedical Research Fund.

Registration

Registration is free but mandatory
Registration deadline: 11 April 2022

Registration form >> 

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