Tufts University: 175 Years of Innovation

In 1992 Dr. Brent Cochran began his career teaching at the Tufts School of Medicine and then the Graduate School of Biomedical Studies, eventually becoming the school’s Program Director. While at Tufts, his lab was the first to identify the transcription factor family now known as STATs, proteins that play key roles in many biological processes including blood and immune cell development. His lab was also able to develop methods for using shRNA libraries to screen GBM stem cell lines for genes required for cell growth. Findings such as these bring scientists and medical experts closer to preventing and treating cancer.

In 2020 Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences faculty members Karl Munger and Irene Georgakoudi developed a new method to detect cervical cancer. Working with a team consisting of researchers from Tufts’ Engineering, Medical, and Biomedical schools, Munger and Georgakoudi used fluorescence to detect pre-cancerous metabolic and physical changes in epithelial cells lining the cervix. This new imaging method can visualize both metabolic and structural changes within individual cells, while also being able to scan the surface in a completely non-destructive manner. The work of these Tufts scholars brings the medical field closer to non-invasive, early-stage bedside diagnostics.