University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty members, Judith Christman,
Ph.D., and James R. Anderson, Ph.D., have received named professorships
through the Stokes-Shackleford Fund for their contributions to the field
of medicine. The announcements were made recently by James O. Armitage,
M.D., dean of the UNMC College of Medicine.
“Drs. Anderson and Christman are distinguished investigators in their
field and are extremely deserving of this honor,” Dr. Armitage said. “The
Stokes-Shackleford Fund has been very valuable in supporting investigators
and faculty through the years and provides us with an opportunity to honor
truly outstanding people.”
Dr. Anderson, chairman of UNMC’s preventive & societal medicine
department since 1989, has been named “Stokes-Shackleford Professor of
Biostatistics.” He earned his Ph.D. in biostatistics at the University
of Washington in Seattle.
Dr. Christman, professor and chairwoman of the department of biochemistry
and molecular biology since 1994, has been named “Stokes-Shackleford Professor
of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.” She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry
at Columbia University in New York.
Dr. Anderson is studying the treatments and late effects of rhabdomyosarcoma,
a childhood cancer. Dr. Anderson is among researchers looking at the long-term
effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Physicians cure about
75 percent of children with the disease through surgery, radiation and
chemotherapy, he said.
“It’s a great honor,” Dr. Anderson said of the professorship. “The funding
will be helpful in the work we’re doing in childhood cancer because we’ll
be able to get work done sooner and perhaps be able to do more than what
we might otherwise have been able to do.”
Dr. Christman studies the role of DNA methylation in regulating gene
expression. (Methylation inactivates tumor suppression genes). Dr. Christman’s
group was the first to show that by inhibiting the process that leads to
methylation, tumor cells become more normal in appearance and behavior.
She and her collaborators have developed new inhibitors of methylation
that should be less toxic than many agents currently used to treat cancer
and are currently testing them in cell and animal models of cancer.
“The Stokes-Shackleford Professorship is a great honor,” Dr. Christman
said. “It’s nice to have the recognition. However, what it is most important
is that the funding that comes with it will allow me to test the feasibility
of new ideas without having to delay research until I can convince a granting
agency that it will succeed.
The Stokes-Shackleford Fund was established in 1980 by the estate of
Bertha Little to “commemorate the exemplary lives and contributions to
the field of medicine and surgery,” by her former husband, Arthur C. Stokes,
and her grandfather, James Madison Shackleford. Stokes was an 1899 graduate
of the Omaha Medical College.