Devi named to ACTS board of Directors

Gayathri Devi, PhD associate professor of surgery and pathology and director of Duke Cancer Institute's Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer, has been elected to serve on Association for Clinical and Translational Sciences (ACTS) board of directors (2019-2020).

"It is my pleasure to welcome such an exceptional group of senior investigators to help ACTS achieve its goal in 2019," said ACTS executive director Cameron Curtis. "The organization will continue to grow and thrive under this group of highly qualified leaders because they possess the experience needed to look ahead, insight to dig deeper, and expertise to plan for the future."

The Association for Clinical and Translational Sciences focuses on research, education, advocacy and mentoring. The organization supports investigations that integrate multiple disciplines across the full translational science spectrum: from population based and policy research, through patient oriented and human subject clinical research, to basic discovery.

Devi’s research, in part, focuses on elucidating the signaling pathways that regulate the ability of cells to adapt and survive during cellular stress. Previous studies in the Devi Laboratory have identified the role of an adaptive stress response signature in advanced breast cancer patients dominated by anti-apoptotic signaling and NFkB transcriptional activity, which correlated with clonal outgrowth of cell death–resistant cancer cells and suppressed anti-cancer immune responses.

In 2017 Devi was awarded $1.1 million from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (CDMP-BCRP) to study breast cancer metastasis. Devi is a principal investigator for a Duke NCCU disparities research project, led by DCI deputy director Steve Patierno, PhD, that received a $2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 2017.

“I look forward to working with the ACTS board to increase recruitment of individual members from Duke and partners with the purpose of improving team science, enhance collaboration between basic science and clinical faculty, and foster the next generation of translational research scientists," said Devi.

Devi is only one of 14 elected to the ACTS board of directors. Her role is effective immediately.