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Joseph G. Rogers, MD, will serve as interim chair of the Department of Medicine, effective July 1, 2017. Dr. Rogers will succeed Mary Klotman, MD, who will leave her role as chair of the department on July 1 to serve as dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. 

A standing-room only crowd turned out for the April 12 Lasker Lecture in the Trent Semans Center Learning Hall to hear Dr. William Kaelin Jr., a Duke University alumnus, graduate of the Duke School of Medicine, and recipient of the prestigious 2016 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.

Tony Fuller, a fourth-year medical student who received his Master of Science in Global Health from Duke in 2015, has received the Bass Connections Award for Outstanding Mentorship. This new award recognizes the vital role that graduate students and postdocs play in mentoring undergraduate students on Bass Connections teams.

Junior faculty members are often faced with the critical challenge of jump-starting their careers at the same time that family/childcare obligations are least flexible. In recognition of this challenge, the School of Medicine is pleased to support the Faculty Flex Voucher Program. Faculty Flex Vouchers are designed to be used in a wide variety of ways by connecting junior faculty members with high quality academic services that facilitate their engagement in scholarly work.

Finding could lead to new approaches to fight cancer and slow the effects of aging Duke Cancer Institute scientists have described a previously unknown series of steps that cells undergo when stressed, adding crucial information to the understanding of DNA damage that is at the heart of research into aging and cancer. The finding is reported online in the journal Cancer Discovery.

Use of flame retardant chemicals coincides with increased incidence of thyroid cancer Higher exposure to chemicals used to reduce the flammability of furniture, carpets, electronics and other household items appears to be associated with papillary thyroid cancer, according to study conducted by the Duke Cancer Institute and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.

The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship (ASF) today announced the selection of its 2017-18 class of North Carolina Albert Schweitzer Fellows. Twenty-three graduate students from across the state, including three from Duke University Medical School, will spend the next year learning to effectively address the social factors that impact health, and developing lifelong leadership skills. In doing so, they will follow the example set by famed physician-humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, for whom their Fellowship is named.

A shorter regimen is scientifically sound, but most women still get the longer therapy  More than half of older women with early stage breast cancer received more radiation therapy than what might be medically necessary, adding additional treatment and health care costs, according to a study led by Duke Cancer Institute researchers. (Image of Rachel A. Greenup, M.D. to left and E. Shelly Hwang, M.D. to right)

Professors of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Raphael Valdivia, PhD, and Alejandro Aballay, PhD, were recently elected as fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology, an honorific leadership group within American Society of Microbiology. A total of 73 new fellows were elected this year. Election into the prestigious academy exemplifies a member’s scientific achievements and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.

The findings advance progress toward HIV vaccine design A Duke Health-led research team has described both the pathway of HIV protective antibody development and a synthetic HIV outer envelope mimic that has the potential to induce the antibodies with vaccination.