With over 180 attendees and over $145,000 in donations, the Forward Lymphoma event with Coach Bob Knight was a huge success. To view photos from the event, click here.
Full Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Member of the University of Wisconsin Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Miyamoto grew up in Kyushu, Japan, where he spent much time studying Kendo (a Japanese martial art) during his youth before he moved to California at the age of 17. He continued practicing and teaching Kendo in California before he began his higher education in cancer research, including graduate studies at University of California-Berkeley, a summer research internship at NIH, and a postdoctoral study at the Salk Institute. He began his research on a group of important transcription factors, the NF-κB family, during the postdoctoral period and continues to study it since he came to Madison in 1995. NF-κB controls expression of genes in cancer cells to increase their survival and resistance to therapeutic agents. NF-κB also regulates other normal processes, such as development of lymphocytes and lymphoid organs. His current research focuses on three main areas:
Firstly, his group aims to understand the mechanisms of cellular responses to DNA damage, including those that are mainstay anti-cancer agents, such as ionizing radiation and topoisomerase inhibitors. His team has discovered a new NF-κB regulatory pathway that modulates cancer cell death and related responses, which may become targets for future anti-cancer drug development.
Secondly, his team has been developing mouse model systems to understand the role of the NF-κB system in regulation of lymphocytes and secondary lymphoid organs. This effort is leading to new understanding of the roles that protein movements into and out of the cell nuclear play in the above processes and how dysregulation of such processes may lead to different disease states including cancer.
Finally, his team has been engaged in fruitful collaborative projects with clinical colleagues and other basic scientists aiming to translate bench findings to the clinic and vice versa in the area of lymphoma and multiple myeloma. This multi-investigator team effort revealed new mechanisms and roles of NF-κB in both lymphoma and myeloma patient samples. In particular, the team revealed the critical involvement of cancer-associated stromal cells (non-cancerous cells—normally not targeted by the contemporary anticancer drugs) in promoting atypical NF-κB regulation leading to increased survival and drug-resistance in lymphoma and myeloma cells. Current efforts are aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms involved and targeting them for drug development through multiple approaches, including chemical and natural compound library screening. The Forward Lymphoma Fund will play a paramount role in continuation of this translational research effort.
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