Skin cancer researcher awarded photobiology medal

Douglas E. Brash, professor of therapeutic radiology and dermatology, will be awarded the 2014 Finsen Medal of the International Union of Photobiology (IUP).

Douglas E. Brash, professor of therapeutic radiology and dermatology, will be awarded the 2014 Finsen Medal of the International Union of Photobiology (IUP).

The medal, recognizing lifetime achievement in the field of photobiology, is presented every five years by the IUP Congress, held this year in Cordoba, Argentina. It commemorates Niels R. Finsen, recipient of the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his studies on phototherapy of cutaneous tuberculosis.

Brash’s laboratory has elucidated many of the steps through which sunlight causes skin cancer, as well as sunlight’s role in triggering protective mechanisms. In the United States, skin cancers such as melanoma and basal and squamous cell carcinomas are as frequent as all other cancers combined. The Brash team determined which ultraviolet-induced DNA photoproducts lead to mutations and then used the unusual “UV signature” of these mutations to identify genes whose mutation decades earlier initiated a skin cell’s journey to cancer.

Other discoveries have included the molecular pathway by which DNA photoproducts trigger cell signaling, the fact that telomeres are UV-sensitive but are ignored by the DNA repair system, and the ability of UV-exposed melanin to create mutagenic DNA photoproducts in the dark, hours after a person has left the beach.

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