Yale Department of Pharmacology Will Dedicate New Wing

A one-day scientific symposium will be held at Yale Medical School October 23 to celebrate the dedication of the Department of Pharmacology’s new wing and renovated laboratories.

The theme of the symposium, “New Frontiers in Molecular Pharmacology and Medicine,” reflects the goal of the new and renovated wing – to provide state of the art laboratory space for one of the fastest growing areas in science. The construction and renovation consists of a new multi-level extension to the Sterling Hall of Medicine’s B-Wing and a two-phased renovation of the existing B-Wing.

The extension provides laboratory space for Joseph Schlessinger, the chair and professor of pharmacology; labs for four new assistant professors, two of whom have already been appointed, and space for a Senior Crystallographer, recruited in conjunction with the departments of Cell Biology and Cellular and Molecular Physiology.

“Our goal is to modernize the department, to make dramatic improvements to the laboratories and facilities, and to hire young faculty that will be able to carry on the mission to the next generation,” Schlessinger said. He also aims within five years to make Yale one of the main research centers in signal transduction.

“In the field of signal transduction we are trying to figure out the rules and the mechanisms underlying the intracellular wiring diagram,” he said. “Insulin is a good example. We know that insulin is responsible for regulation of blood sugar as well as many other responses, but the important question is how does the action of insulin control blood sugar and other insulin responses.”

Speakers at the symposium will be Tony Hunter of the Salk Institute; Joan Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and chemistry professor at Yale; Jack Dixon, dean of Scientific Affairs at the University of California at San Diego Cancer Center; Robert Weinberg of the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Joseph Goldstein, Nobel Prize winner now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas; Stuart Schreiber of Harvard, and Paul Greengard, Nobel Prize winner now at Rockefeller University.

The event is free and open to the public. It will be in Harkness Auditorium, 330 Cedar St., from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.