Joan Brugge
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Joan Brugge is the Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professor of Cell Biology and the Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard Medical School, where she also served as the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology from 2004 to 2014. Her research focuses on cancer biology, and she has been recognized for her explorations into the Rous sarcoma virus, extracellular matrix adhesion, and epithelial tumor progression in breast cancer.
Brugge originally intended on pursuing a career as a mathematics instructor. While she was attending Northwestern University as an undergraduate student, her sister developed a brain tumor. This event sparked a newfound passion for biology and specifically cancer research. While Brugge was completing her undergraduate degree in biology, she became interested in tumor virology, which refers to the study of how viruses can affect and in some cases produce cancerous cells. This focus led her to the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, which housed one of the only virology programs in the country at the time. Brugge graduated with her doctorate degree in virology in 1975.
After the completion of her doctorate degree, Brugge joined Dr. Ray Erikson at the University of Colorado for her postdoctorate work. It was there that she discovered a protein that was formed from both the viral and cellular forms of the Src gene. This was a major breakthrough in cancer research, since it proved that genes that cause cells to become cancerous originate from normal cellular genes.
In 1979, Brugge took an assistant professor position at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook, eventually becoming a Professor of Microbiology. She continued her studies on the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) that she had discovered in her postdoctorate work. Much of her research centered on finding the role of pp60src, which is the protein that is coded for by RSV. Brugge then moved on to the same position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989. During this time, she was also named an Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which is an assembly of medical scientists and researchers that advances biomedical research for the benefit of the general public.
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