In Conversation with UCSF's Elizabeth Blackburn

On October 13, 2009, UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, sat down for a conversation with molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, who was named to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The conversation was simulcast to the UCSF Mission Bay campus, Rock Hall Auditorium.

Blackburn and her colleagues are recognized for discovering an enzyme that plays a key role in normal cell function, as well as in cell aging and most cancers. The scientists research sparked a whole field of inquiry into the possibility that this enzyme, called telomerase, could be reactivated to treat such age-related diseases as blindness, cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative diseases, and deactivated to treat cancer, in which it generally is overactive.

Desmond-Hellmann, a board-certified physician in internal medicine and medical oncology, became UCSFs first woman chancellor in August. She previously served as president of product development at Genentech, during which time many of the companys patient therapeutics were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, making Genentech the nations No. 1 producer of anti-cancer drug treatments.

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• UCSF
• Nobel
• Elizabeth Blackburn
• Susan Desmond-Hellmann