by Neil Caudle

or years, when Ken Harden went home for the holidays, his Aunt Beulah would try to figure out what he did for a living. "What kind of research are you doing?" she would ask. "Cancer research?"

No, not exactly.

"Heart?"

Well, no.

"Then what, exactly?"

In a way, he was studying them all—every disease and disorder of vital interest to Aunt Beulah and her family and friends. Because Harden, professor of pharmacology, is one of an ensemble of Carolina scientists who have tuned their careers to the theme of cell signaling.

"All of a sudden," Harden says, "we have become one of the best places in the country to do this kind of work."

For Harden, Carolina jumped up the leaderboard when it landed several young stars who instantly meshed with the talent already in place. "If you were to tell anyone working in this field that we had snagged any one of these guys, they’d say, ‘Wow,’" Harden says. "And we have several wows."

Why are the wows coming here? Why is a Monday-night session on cell signaling one of the hottest draws on campus, regularly packing in 40 to 60 faculty members, postdocs, and students who actually care passionately about G proteins and other exotica?

he short answer: this is the time and the place. Just as the revolution in cell-signaling research is about to explode, Carolina has been quietly assembling an arsenal of intellectual firepower. And now, in various combinations, the wows are setting off bombshells in journals such as Nature and Cell. These scientists believe, adamantly believe, that untangling the mysteries of cell signaling will be the next, necessary step toward treatments—or, dare we say it, cures—for cancer and many other diseases and disorders.

No, this is not science fiction. In clinical trials, patients with early phase chronic myelogenous leukemia are taking a pill that stops the disease in its tracks for at least 18 months. The pill contains a molecule that artfully intervenes in a cell-signaling process gone awry. And this remarkable result, scientists believe, is the first of many to come. With the sequencing of the human genome complete, and the computing power arriving to crunch the numbers, researchers and drug companies have scores of new molecules to investigate and many possible "targets" for treatments or cures in the pathways of cell signaling. So in the halls of biochemistry, pharmacology, medicine, radiation oncology, and other departments on campus, there is a sense of urgency, of dramas unfolding. Ideas pinball around from lab to lab. And everyone involved seems to run on adrenaline.

Harden, for one, is the kind of guy who will leap up from his chair and flip the lights on and off as he’s explaining a molecular switch. He will dash little red diagrams all over your notebook paper, trying to boil something on the order of War and Peace down to the level of "See Spot run." Not all of the details sink in, but the fascination does. Here is a bit of the story, as we understand it, so far.

Next: Loaded for Bear

© 2001 Endeavors, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.