Chemistry professor Cliff Berkman will present “A New Approach to Targeting and Treating Cancer” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 21, in the Honors Hall lounge at Washington State University. The free, public talk is the second in the Honors College Distinguished Lecture Series.
“We want to introduce students and the community to the outstanding accomplishments of WSU faculty and the impact of their work,” said Dean M. Grant Norton. “Cliff Berkman is well respected in his field for his research and teaching.”
An Edward R. Meyer professor at WSU, Berkman has been recognized in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and as a U.S. Professor of the Year nominee by CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and second leading cause of cancer death in American men, Berkman said.
His group at WSU works with a prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) that has been described as an “ideal biomarker” for prostate cancer cells. With it, the team can target the cells for diagnosis and therapy.
Berkman earned his B.A. in chemistry from Lake Forest University and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Loyola University of Chicago. After two postdoctoral positions at IGEN Research Institute and Seattle Biomedical Research institute, he joined the faculty of San Francisco State University. In 2007, he joined WSU as a professor in the Department of Chemistry.
