Prof. Steve Belinsky Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, USA

Steve Belinsky received his undergraduate training and graduate degrees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He then did a postdoctoral fellowship and was a Senior Staff fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences before moving to the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque, NM in... read more1990. He is currently Director of the Lung Cancer Program and co-directs the Cancer Population Sciences Program for the University of New Mexico Cancer Center. He has served on numerous advisory boards for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Belinsky has worked in the field of tobacco carcinogenesis for over 20 years and is internationally recognized for his work in lung cancer and translational studies for early detection of lung cancer. His laboratory was the first to demonstrate that the tobacco specific nitrosamine causes DNA adducts that accumulate in the lung and lead to mutation of the K-ras oncogene. His work has been extended to evaluate epigenetic mechanisms for lung cancer, specifically inactivation of genes through aberrant promoter hypermethylation.