Huge congratulations to Shane Killarney and Dr. Kris Wood at Duke University for their groundbreaking study published in Cancer Discovery (and featured on the cover!). Their research uncovers a potential game-changer for treatment-resistant cancers: inhibiting the “dark kinase” PKN2 to block aggressive, mesenchymal-like tumor cells.
This work is a perfect example of the power of interdisciplinary thinking. Shane not only conducted elegant wet-lab experiments but also mined public cancer datasets — skills he developed during the COVID-19 shutdown — to pinpoint PKN2 as a critical vulnerability in hard-to-treat cancers.
Shane is a 2023 recipient of the TriCEM Graduate Student Award, and we’re incredibly proud to see TriCEM’s support helping to fuel research with such high impact across cancer biology, computational analysis, and evolutionary medicine.
