Brown University

Machine learning technique helps identify cancer cell types

The new technique could be useful in early testing of cancer drugs and in understanding drug resistance.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University researchers have developed a new image analysis technique to distinguish two key cancer cell types associated with tumor progression. The approach could help in pre-clinical screening of cancer drugs and shed light on a cellular metamorphosis that is associated with more malignant and drug-resistant cancers.

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMT, is a process by which more docile epithelial cells transform into more aggressive mesenchymal cells. Tumors with higher numbers of mesenchymal cells are often more malignant and more resistant to drug therapies. The new technique combines microscopic imaging with a machine learning algorithm to better identify and distinguish between the two cell types in laboratory samples.

“We know that there are these different cell types interacting within tumors and that therapeutics can target these cells differently,” said Susan Leggett, a doctoral student in Brown’s pathobiology graduate program and lead author of a paper describing the technique. “We’ve developed a model that can pick out these cell types automatically and in an unbiased way. We think this could help us better understand how these different cell types respond to drug treatment.”

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Brown’s J. Michael Kosterlitz wins Nobel Prize in Physics

News conference with the professor of physics will be live-streamed at 3:00 pm on Tuesday, October 4.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded Brown University Professor J. Michael Kosterlitz the Nobel Prize in Physics “for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.”

[A news conference with Professor Kosterlitz will be live-streamed at http://www.brown.edu/web/livestream/ at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, October 4. Media who wish to attend in person or ask questions by telephone should email brian_clark@brown.edu with KOSTERLITZ as the subject line.]

Kosterlitz is the Harrison E. Farnsworth Professor of Physics at Brown, where he joined the faculty in 1982. He shares one half of the Nobel prize with F. Duncan M. Haldane of Princeton University, with the other half of the Nobel going to David J. Thouless of the University of Washington in Seattle.

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Student-developed software streamlines archaeological analysis

An interdisciplinary research team of Brown undergraduates led by Assistant Professor of Anthropology Parker VanValkenburgh developed a bilingual, tablet-based app for field and laboratory use.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —Over three seasons excavating reducciones, or colonial planned towns, in Peru, Parker VanValkenburgh and his international research team collected tens of thousands of small ceramic sherds. Those tiny pieces of pottery, dating back hundreds of years, could shed light on the lives and habits of the indigenous populations forcibly resettled into towns by Spanish colonialists — what they ate, how they organized their living spaces and how they were connected to the rest of the world.

In such an endeavor, critical mass is both a key and an obstacle.

“A single sherd on its own is often mute, but with 80,000 sherds you notice patterns and establish lines of evidence that enable you to tell really interesting stories,” said VanValkenburgh, an assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University.

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Brown provost joins global leaders awarded for work on fairness and human rights

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Society for Progress recognizes Richard M. Locke with an inaugural Progress Medal for his scholarship on working conditions and labor rights in the global economy.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Society for Progress has named Richard M. Locke, Brown University provost and professor of political science and international and public affairs, recipient of one of five inaugural Progress Medals awarded to leaders across the globe for scholarship on issues of fairness and well-being.

The award recognizes Locke’s “work on labor justice in global supply chains and the influence and limits of private standards in integrating equity and efficiency,” the Society stated in announcing the awards on Sept. 23.

“I am both honored and humbled to be a recipient of this award,” said Locke, a scholar and authority on international labor relations and worker rights, and comparative political economy.

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