About the UVM Cancer Center

The University of Vermont (UVM) Cancer Center was founded in 1974. The cancer center is a not-for-profit organization administratively located at the Larner College of Medicine with clinical partnerships across the University of Vermont Health Network and beyond.

Mission

The mission of the University of Vermont Cancer Center is to reduce the burden of cancer in Vermont, northeastern New York and across northern New England, through research, outstanding clinical care, community outreach and education.

Vision

Working together, affiliated members, clinicians, scientists, and community stakeholders will be leaders in facilitating transdisciplinary discovery and achieving cancer health equity in northern New England.

The Four Pillars

The Cancer Center is a research institute, a clinical care facility, an educational entity and a community organization all in one. Our four pillars - research, clinical care, education, and community outreach - supports the mission of the Center -- to reduce the burden on cancer in the catchment area. 

The four pillars related to each other

Location & Facilities

The cancer center is an official administrative unit of UVM's Larner College of Medicine. Our clinicians enjoy a clinical partnership with the University of Vermont Medical Center. This flagship academic medical center includes an Ambulatory Care Center, an Education and Conference Center, and a cancer center clinical facility which allows integrated, multidisciplinary services for cancer diagnosis, outpatient treatment, and post-treatment follow up.

Contact Information

The University of Vermont Cancer Center
The Courtyard at Given
4th Floor North
89 Beaumont Avenue
Burlington, VT  05405

For clinical matters, please call (802) 847-8400.

For administrative matters, please use the contact information below.

Phone: (802) 656-4414
Fax: (802) 656-8788

Email: cancer@uvmcc.med.uvm.edu
Twitter: @UVMcancercenter
Facebook: @UVMCancerCenter

Cancer Center Trainees Receive Awards to Present Their Research at AACR

April 4, 2024 by Katelyn Queen, PhD

Shannon Prior, a graduate student in the lab of Paula Deming, PhD, conducts research in a tissue culture hood

UVM Cancer Center, Cancer Cell, trainee members, Shannon Prior and Gopika Nandagopal, have each received a prestigious travel award to attend the annual meeting for the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) in San Diego, California. The AACR annual meeting brings together scientists, clinicians, and other healthcare professionals from across the country, to share the latest advances in cancer science and medicine. The conference, to be held April 5-10, 2024, features a multidisciplinary scientific program centered around making progress towards preventing and treating cancer. 

Prior and Nandagopal are PhD students in the lab of Paula Deming, PhD, and will present posters on their research at the annual meeting. The Deming lab studies lung adenocarcinoma, the most common primary lung cancer in the United States, focusing on lung cancer driven by mutations in two genes, KRAS and STK11. 

A native Vermonter, Prior has been involved in cancer care for many years, working in the UVM Cancer Center Clinical Trials Office before beginning her PhD. Prior will present her graduate work showing that starving lung cancer that contains KRAS/STK11 mutations of the cellular nutrient glutamine promotes a more aggressive and metastatic state. This contrasts the effects of glutamine starvation in other glutamine dependent cancers where previous work has shown therapeutic potential for glutamine starvation. Prior has identified a metabolic pathway, the Hexosamine Biosynthetic Pathway (HBP), that KRAS/STK11 mutated cells may utilize to avoid cell death due to glutamine starvation. Future work will investigate how STK11 may regulate the HBP metabolic pathway to ultimately identify therapeutic targets. After completing her graduate work Prior hopes to continue to work with the Cancer Center to reduce the burden of cancer in Vermont. 

At the AACR meeting, Nandagopal will present her work characterizing whether mutations that occur within a certain region of the STK11 gene, the C-terminal domain, are likely to be benign or contribute to disease. Her findings indicate that there are likely key residues within this region, that when mutated, alter STK11 function and contribute to disease progression. As a first-time attendee at the AACR annual meeting, Nandagopal is excited to share her research and connect with other cancer scientists. 

To learn more about the research our cancer center members conduct please visit our member directory here.