The 24th Annual George A. Adrouny Lecture ~ Guillermina (Gigi) Lozano

The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology will present the 24th Annual George Adrouny Memorial Lectureship on Friday, April 17th, 10:00 a.m.  This year's lecture will be in the Hutchinson Memorial Gallery and Auditorium, 1430 Tulane Avenue. The title of this talk is "Function and dysfunction of p53 tumor suppressor pathway."

The 2026 featured speaker is Guillermina (Gigi) Lozano, Endowed Hubert L. Olive Stringer Distinguished Chair in Oncology in Honor of Sue Gribble Stringer, Division of Discovery Science, Department of Genetics, UT MD Anderson in Houston, Texas.  Dr. Lozano is a renowned geneticist recognized for her studies of the p53 tumor suppressor pathway. This pathway is undermined in a large percent of human cancers via mutations and deletions of p53. Her laboratory identified a transcriptional activation function for p53. Using mouse models, her team characterized the physiological importance of Mdm2 and Mdm4 proteins as potent inhibitors of p53. The Mdm proteins are over expressed in many cancers that lack p53 mutations presenting an alternate mechanism of eliminating p53 activity. Other mouse models inheriting the most common p53 mutations revealed gain-of-function phenotypes that drive metastases.