Second-year medical student Michael Wilson has been named the recipient of the 2004 Dean's Prize in Student Research for his outstanding work on nuclear hormone receptors. Dean Kessler will present the prize at the 18th Annual Medical Student Research Poster Session this Wednesday, January 12.

Wilson's award-winning research on "Analysis of Real-Time In Vivo
Androgen Receptor-Chaperone Interactions and Kinetics Using Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer" was conducted in the lab of Marc Diamond, MD, assistant professor of neurology, who sponsored the study.

According to Diamond, Wilson set out to test whether a major constituent of nuclear receptor-chaperone complexes, hsp90, dissociates after hormone binding, an assumption that has been accepted in the field for more than 20 years. But after testing that claim in vivo with two different nuclear receptors, Wilson's data revealed the opposite.

Although the results are still preliminary, they could potentially lead
to a greater understanding of nuclear receptor function, which underlies diseases such as cancer of the prostate and breast.

"Michael managed to get data that overturned the dogma very
convincingly," says Diamond, who added that Michael "ended up knowing more about the subject than I do. His accomplishments in the lab, with essentially no prior experience, were truly remarkable."

Nominations for the prestigious annual award are reviewed by the Student Research Committee, chaired by Dan Lowenstein, MD.

"Student contributions such as Michael's to both the world of research and the quality of the academic environment here are what makes UCSF the great place that it is," says Lowenstein.

The poster session opens at 11:30 am on January 12 in the Millberry
Union Gymnasium on the Parnassus campus, followed by the award
presentation.