“New Career Dimensions” — Nola Hylton, Ph.D.
Sandy Walsh, California Breast Cancer Research Council
Often basic scientists, clinicians, epidemiologists, and public health experts do not speak the same language, and investigators from these diverse disciplines do not have the opportunity to interact. The Career Enrichment award provides this opportunity on a one-on-one basis, not just to understand the language of another discipline, but to have hands-on experience in the new field. Whether it is a breast cancer scientist exploring a new area or a scientist from another area of study expanding to breast cancer, the result is new ideas and applications that may provide innovative new insights into breast cancer problems.
This year a Career Enrichment award has been granted to a physicist, an MRI expert who will spend a year in the laboratory of a basic cancer biologist. Nola M. Hylton, Ph.D., is a professor of radiology at UC San Francisco. For the last ten years she has been working on the application of MRI to the detection, diagnosis, and staging of breast cancer as a part of the UCSF Breast MRI Research Group. She has a solid record of accomplishments, and when she began doing preliminary work using a mouse model, found a new need for the further development of her career. Dr. Hylton found it desirable to move beyond anatomical imaging to being able to look at physiological changes. She realized that to expand her work into molecular imaging, linking research in imaging and molecular biology, she needed further training in cancer biology. After her recent appointment to full professor, and as an established investigator, she felt that this was an ideal point in her career at which to make this transition. Although she had previous training in the basic sciences and had purchased books to teach herself the language and gain an understanding of the molecular methods, she realized that the only way to truly learn the language and the techniques, so that they would be “second nature,” was to have hands-on training under the tutelage of an expert.
The laboratory of Gerard Evan, Ph.D., the Gerson & Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Biology in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UC San Francisco, is studying the molecular processes that underlie the formation of tumors, tumor progression, and the maintenance of tumors. His laboratory has developed a series of mouse models of human cancer in which the formation of tumors can be turned on or off. Dr. Hylton will spend her time during the next year in his laboratory utilizing the animal models and the molecular techniques available. These models will provide an excellent means to evaluate the use of a variety of imaging strategies to study the stages of cancer. This is a perfect combination of disciplines and will allow Dr. Hylton to gain expertise in the language, tools, and scientific methods of cancer biology and will allow her to use these new tools to understand biologic processes using multiple modalities to interpret studies. Application of these newly developed techniques to her own laboratory studies of breast cancer imaging could open exciting and fertile new areas of breast cancer research. Collaborations like this can play an instrumental role in achieving the translation of the results of basic, molecular research into the clinic.
Career enrichment can also be described as career transition. It can allow the opportunity for clinicians/scientists to make a transition into another area of emphasis. This could be an area such as public policy that may interest a physician as a step toward “semi-retirement.” Community physicians could also develop expertise in conducting clinical trials and by doing this could make it possible for expanded participation in clinical trials. For information or assistance concerning the Career Enrichment Awards, contact the CBCRP. Research administrators will be glad to help you.
