Four faculty members were honored with chancellor’s medals and four others were invested as endowed professors at the Convocation and Investiture ceremony at UMass Chan Medical School.

The festivities begin on Friday, Sept. 8 with the annual White Coat Ceremony, welcoming the new T.H. Chan School of Medicine students into the medical community.

The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees voted to approve one new endowed chair at UMass Chan Medical School and the appointment of two accomplished faculty members to endowed chairs.

Research by Sharon Cantor, PhD, into how chemotherapy works in inherited breast and ovarian cancer overturned a long-held model in the field and will play a key role in developing successful therapies.

Research from the lab of Sharon Cantor, PhD, provides a new understanding of a PARP inhibitor, a chemotherapy drug commonly used against breast and ovarian cancer.

Sumeet Nayak’s research in the lab of Sharon B. Cantor, PhD, has led to a renewed understanding of how cancer develops and has opened up avenues to effectively advance anti-cancer therapies.

A UMass Medical School research team has been awarded a National Cancer Institute grant to advance understanding of how hereditary breast and ovarian cancer genes work, and why tumors lacking these genes are sensitive to chemotherapy.