Although “cancer” is really over 200 different diseases, there are some characteristics, called “hallmarks of cancer” (a term coined by D. Hanahan and R. Weinberg), that cancers have in common. These hallmarks of cancer are characterized by the loss of regulation of specific processes that are under tight control in normal cells and tissues. Dr. Hitt’s lectures will provide an introduction to the hallmarks of cancer, highlighting the challenges they pose to conventional and modern cancer therapies.
Instructor: Mary Hitt
Dr. Mary Hitt is an associate professor emerita, recently retired from the Department of Oncology at the University of Alberta. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of California in Berkeley, California in 1986, and was post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London (UK), the University of Washington in Seattle (USA), and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She was assistant professor in the Centre for Gene Therapy at McMaster University for a short time before moving to Edmonton in 2003. Her research focused over the years on the role that different viruses might play in causing and in treating cancer. She taught the course “Introduction to Oncology” for 15 years at the University of Alberta.
