Christopher Welch, a fellow in the Hahn Lab, has been awarded a Lineberger Fellowship 2010 Award. The award, which comes with a $5000 prize, was presented Feb. 21, 2011. Chris is in the MD/PhD program in the School of Medicine.
Chris received the award to honor his work in understanding the regulation of Rho GTPases, a class of proteins that regulate movement within the cell, acting like an on/off switch. He has developed new tools to analyze these proteins in living cells. This is especially significant for cancer research in understanding metastasis and why cells move into tissues when they shouldn’t or fail to fight off disease when they should. His work also has implications for a variety of other diseases such as inflammatory or cardiovascular diseases.
The Lineberger Fellows competitive award was established in 1988 by the Center’s Board of Visitors to promote and encourage graduate students to pursue cancer research.
Chris’ Application Research Statement
Lineberger Cancer Center announcement of all award recipients