Thanks to CBB Research Symposium Co-Chairs Amy Green, Kris Johnson and Melissa Sherrill Martin, the ladies of Cattle Baron’s Ball headed their SUVs toward downtown Dallas on Monday, April 30, for the 2018 Research Symposium hosted by The Adolphus, Mary Kay and The Deason Foundation and sponsored by Nancy C. and Richard R. Rogers, Mary Kay Inc. and The Deason Foundation.
The annual update serves as a reminder that despite all the fun, fashions and festivities, CBB’s purpose is to raise funds for researchers in their efforts to treat and beat cancer.
The evening’s location was an update in itself. It was the newly refreshed Adolphus. And while some might have expected the gathering of 100 to have taken place in the second level ballroom, guests like Isabell Novakov with Trey Higginbotham, Olivia Kearney, Kristina Wrenn, Nikki Webb, Annika Cail, Susan Farris, Nancy Gopez, Joanna Clarke and Doug Deason with Jacki Pick were directed to the elevators that took them to the 19th floor, which in earlier days had been known as The Century Room and “the epicenter of Dallas entertainment for decades.” In the 1970s, it was transformed into additional luxury suites. However, with the recent restoration of the hotel, the ballroom was being brought back to past glories. Little did the ladies know that legend has it that the ghost of jilted bride has been known to wander the floor. Seems it was back in the 1930s when the bridegroom no-showed and the bride was later found hanging from the ballroom’s balcony.
If the ghost was in attendance on this evening, she was able to hear UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology Dr. Puneeth Iyengar on “Unchecked Adipocyte Lipolysis and Tumor Progression in Cachexia.” His “focus has been on developing new indications for uses of SAbR and hypofractionation for lunch cancer.” Puneeth and his team are also “attempting to understand how tumors can cause metabolic changes leading to fat and muscle wasting, resulting in reduced survival.
Joining Puneeth was UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Department of Biochemistry Associate Professor Dr. Daniel J. Siegwart addressing “Funcational polyesters enable selective small RNA delivery to orthotopic lung tumor cells over normal cells.” Grounded in chemical design, his lab’s central goal “is to use materials chemistry to solve challenges in cancer therapy and diagnosis.