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The Ruth Sager Lecture in Genetics
8/19/08 - 8:00 PM - Lillie Auditorium
"Forward Genetics in the Mouse: Embryonic Patterning Meets Cell Biology"
Kathryn Anderson, Sloan Kettering Institute
Kathryn Anderson trained in Drosophila developmental genetics with Dr. Judith Lengyel at University of California, Los Angeles and Dr. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard in Tübingen Germany. As a faculty member at University of California, Berkeley, her lab characterized the Drosophila Toll pathway. In 1993, she did a sabbatical in Rosa Beddington’s lab at NIMR in London, where she began to learn about mouse embryogenesis. After the sabbatical, her lab began a forward genetic screen to identify new genes important in mouse embryonic development. In 1996 she moved to Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. Her lab now studies the genetic control of patterning in the mouse embryo, particularly the role of cilia in Hedgehog signaling and the role of the actin cytoskeleton in establishment of the mammalian body plan.
Dr. Anderson has received many honors and awards, including being a member of the National Academy of Sciences, President of the Society of Developmental Biology from 1998 to 1999, and receiving the Faculty Awards for Women, National Science Foundation from 1991 to 1996. She has been a Professor in the Graduate School of Medical Sciences, at Cornell University since 1996. Since 2002, Dr. Anderson has been the Program Chair of the Developmental Biology Program at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, New York
 About the Sager Lecture
Dr. Ruth Sager was chief of cancer genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School where she was an acknowledged expert on supressor genes and their relation to breast cancer. Dr. Sager was the author of more than 200 scientific papers on cancer genetics and the existence of DNA outside of cell nuclei, her first field of research, which she pursued through the study of algae. In 1988, Dr. Sager received the Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal in phycology. This medal is awarded every three years in recognition of excellence in published research on marine or freshwater algae. After switching her field of study to breast cancer in 1972, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and studied the disease for a year at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratory in London, England. Dr. Sager graduated from the University of Chicago. She earned a master’s degree at Rutgers University and a doctorate at Columbia University. Dr. Sager was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1977.
She was a professor at Hunter College until 1975, when she joined Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Her cancer research involved the identification of more than 40 possible tumor supressor genes with implications in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.
She also proved “by persistent counterexample, where originality leads,” according to the University of Chicago Magazine article, published in 1994 when she was named alumna of the year.
Dr. Sager died of cancer in March, 1997, at the age of 79.
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