April 18, 2001
Contact: Jennifer Day, (313) 577-1058, jday@med.wayne.edu

News Alert: Cell signaling to be focus of Mary Webber Parker Distinguished Lecture Symposium

George Vande Woude, PhD, director of the Van Andel Research Institute, and Domenico Accili, MD, of Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, will speak tomorrow, April 19, on cell signaling at the second annual Mary Webber Parker Distinguished Lecture Symposium.

The symposium, which will be at 2:30 p.m., is hosted by the Wayne State University Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics. This year’s event honors George Grunberger, MD, former director of the center.

Dr. Vande Woude has written more than 240 scientific research articles and more than 60 books and monographs on the molecular basis of cancer. He served as director for the Division of Basic Sciences at the National Cancer Institute until 1999, when he became director of Grand Rapids’s Van Andel Research Institute. Dr. Vande Woude, a graduate of Rutgers University, previously served in several other capacities at the NCI.

Dr. Accili’s research on the mechanisms of insulin action and resistance in vivo is supported by nearly $3.5 million in funding. He is head of the Diabetes Research Unit in Columbia University’s Division of Endocrinology. Dr. Accili, who received his MD from the University of Rome School of Medicine, has held several positions at the National Institutes of Health.

The symposium is funded by a generous donation by Mary Webber Parker, a philanthropist who was born in 1919 to one of Detroit’s most prominent families. Mrs. Parker, who now lives in Bloomfield, Conn., has funded several programs at the Center for Molecular Medicine & Genetics, including a student outreach program that invites area sixth-graders to the WSU campus to learn more about genetics and what it takes to become a scientist.

With more than 1,000 medical students, WSU is among the nation’s largest medical schools. Together with the Detroit Medical Center, the school is a leader in patient care and medical research in a number of areas including cancer, genetics, pediatrics and the neurosciences.