People

Garth Powis, DPhil, began his new role as the director of the Sanford-Burnham Cancer Center in La Jolla, CA, on May 1. He replaced Kristiina Vuori, MD, PhD, who is currently Sanford-Burnham's president and interim CEO.

Most recently, Powis worked at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he served as chair of Experimental Therapeutics and director of the Center for Targeted Therapy. A molecular and translational pharmacologist, Powis studies the mechanisms that allow cancer cells to endure stress. His research interests include the inhibition of PI3K-AKT survival signaling, redox and hypoxia signaling, and KRAS signaling. He has developed 3 investigational cancer drugs currently in clinical trials, and he is working on novel drugs to inhibit oncogenic KRAS but not wild-type KRAS.

Powis serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has 15 patents and more than 350 publications to his credit.

Jon R. Lorsch, PhD, has been named director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Currently a professor in the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, Lorsch plans to join the NIH this summer. He will take the reins from Judith Greenberg, PhD, who has served as acting director of NIGMS since July 2011.

Lorsch's lab studies how protein synthesis works in normal cells and how the process can be corrected when it goes awry in cancer and other diseases.

At NIGMS, Lorsch will oversee a budget of $2.4 billion, which primarily funds basic research in cell biology, biophysics, genetics, developmental biology, pharmacology, physiology, biological chemistry, biomedical technology, bioinformatics, and computational biology. The institute also supports research training and programs to increase diversity in the research workforce.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.