Einstein Invites Dr. Mina Bissell To Deliver Berta Scharrer Lecture

On Wednesday, December 3, 2008, a capacity crowd filled the LeFrak Auditorium in the Price Center/Block Research Pavilion to hear the 11th Berta V. Scharrer Lecture, organized by the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology. This year's lecturer was Mina J. Bissell, distinguished scientist in the Life Sciences Division at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

(from left) Dr. Birgit Satir, Dr. Mina Bissell,
Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo and Dr. Peter SatirDr. Bissell's selection as this year's speaker duly honors Dr. Scharrer and the path she paved for all female scientists. A researcher of international renown, Dr. Bissell presented her groundbreaking research in the field of breast cancer. Not content to be contained behind a podium, she took command of the stage, punctuating her talk with jokes and reviewed her research. Her discussion began with the work she did in the 1970s, which involved cancer and the role of glycolysis, the breakdown of sugar by cells.

Dr. Bissell's energetic presentation style was foreshadowed by Dr. Birgit Satir, one of the lecture organizers. In her introduction, Dr. Satir told how, when asking a question regarding music at an academic conference, Dr. Bissell had danced up to the podium before posing the question. The energy on display during her lecture might help explain how she could persevere for more than 30 years pursuing a line of research in direct contrast to the beliefs of the establishment.

For many years, cancer research focused on the belief that everything was determined by the genetics of a cell. If a cell had a mutation in its DNA, that was thought to be the sole determinant of the capacity to develop cancer. Dr. Bissell has spent her career focusing on the fact that these mutations are only half of the story. In explaining her work, she stated, "how do cells know what to be?"

We know that the presence of a BRCA1 mutation is related to the development of breast cancer, but this mutation is present in all cells in the body. So, why does cancer only form in the breast? If the presence of a single mutation, such as BRCA1, was enough to result in cancer, the entire body should be, as Dr. Bissell puts it, one huge "lump," of tumor cells formed as a result of this DNA mutation.

Dr. Bissell believes that the other half of the story is the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM), the environment surrounding the cell. Her pioneering work has proven that there is an essential role of the ECM in determining the malignant behavior of cells.

In order to demonstrate the role of the surrounding environment in the development of malignancy, Dr. Bissell and her research team created a cell line which could be placed in different 3-D microenvironments. With these experiments they showed that they could take a malignant cell and by changing the environment, reverse its malignancy to a normal, healthy cell. Going even further, they could then even change the reversal, making the cell malignant again. All of this was shown while the cell retained the same DNA and only the environment around the cell was changed.

The work in Dr. Bissell's lab has made great strides in changing the understanding of cancer development. She has garnered various accolades, including the 2008 Berta V. Scharrer Lecturer, the 2008 Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society, the 2008 Excellence in Science Award from FASEB, election as a Fellow of AAAS, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

After summarizing her findings and dedicating her talk to a person who died of breast cancer, Dr. Bissell encouraged the crowd to follow their own paths and to challenge the norms just as she did. She concluded with her thoughts on how there are myriad opportunities for both young and old to explore new horizons and help rewrite textbooks, as she hopes will someday happen regarding the role of ECM in the development of cancer.

The Berta V. Scharrer Lecture honors the memory of an extraordinary female scientist, who was among Einstein's founding faculty. In particular, the lecture series recognizes Dr. Scharrer's professional struggles in the early part of the last century, when women were not welcomed into the field. Unpaid for much of her career, it wasn't until she joined the Einstein faculty in 1955 that she received her first regular academic appointment and first salary � 25 years after receiving her Ph.D.  Dr. Scharrer helped to found the Department of Anatomy at Einstein, along with her husband, Dr. Ernest Scharrer. She served as professor of anatomy for 40 years, continuing with her involvement in scientific research up until her death in 1995, at the age of 88.

In addition to Dr. Satir, this year's Scharrer Lecture was organized by Dr. Peter Satir and Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, each of whom is a member of the faculty in the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology.