Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases
University of Nebraska Medical Center
University of Nebraska Medical Center

Henry M. Lemon Short Course in Cancer Biology

The 2026 course is scheduled for June 29-30 and will focus on Structural Molecular Biology in Cancer Research.

This annual course brings together leading scientists to address important topics in cancer research. The course will be held at the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in the Gail and Mike Yanney Conference Center, BCC 0.12.101. 

Course Information:

Course Overview 

The short course will cover the full spectrum of DNA biology, from how cells survive and grow, to aging, advanced experimental methods, and new insights into correcting replication errors—the main source of cancer-causing mutations—and will conclude with lessons on the repair of DNA base damage and its role in cancer.

The graphical abstract shows three key ideas. The top row illustrates healthy cells dividing over a long lifespan. The middle row shows different types of DNA damage that can lead to cancer cell proliferation. The bottom row shows how bubble models can be replaced with detailed molecular models, which enables the development of targeted therapies.

Day 1: DNA Damage Response and Cellular Lifespan 

Learning objectives: 

  1. Explore the DNA damage response (DDR) in the context of fundamental biology for replication and transcription, processes required for cell survival and proliferation. 
  2. Describe how DDR repairs different types of DNA damage, from bulky damage to DNA breaks, to allow cells to survive while limiting genome instability. 
  3. Connect double-strand DNA break repair to mitotic lifespan, with insights into aging and cellular lifespan. 

Day 2: DNA Repair Assays and Cancer-Relevant Insights 

Learning objectives: 

  1. Examine specific assays to find new roles for mismatch repair (a DNA replication-associated repair) and nucleotide excision repair (repair of bulky lesions, a transcription-associated repair) and connect these findings back to Day One concept. 
  2. Discuss nucleobase damage, the most common form of DNA damage, and understand the structural and mechanistic insights that link fundamental DNA biology and repair to cancer risk. 

Video Guides to Structural Molecular Biology Methods

X-Ray Crystallography

CryoEM

DNA Repair Mechanisms

Featured Speakers

John A. Tainer, PhD

Director, Department of Structural Biology
Professor, Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Tainer lab

John A. Tainer

Jessica Tyler, PhD

Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Weill Cornell Medical College
Weill Cornell Medicine Graduate School of Medical Sciences

Tyler lab

Jessica Tyler

Zachary Nagel, PhD

Associate Professor of Genomics and Cancer Biology
Department of Environmental Health
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Nagel lab

Zachary Nagel

Sheila S. David, PhD

Professor of Chemistry
Department of Chemistry
University of California, Davis

David lab

Sheila S. David

2026 Faculty Host

Gloria Borgstahl, PhD

Co-Director, Eppley Structural Biology Facility
Professor, UNMC Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases
Research Focus: Drug discovery in cancer and structural biology of DNA repair complexes

402-559-8578

Borgstahl Structural Biology Laboratory

Gloria Borgstahl

2026 Schedule

Journal Clubs

There will be four journal clubs on the featured speaker’s topic. They will be held on: 

  • Thursday, May 28
  • Thursday, June 4  
  • Thursday, June 11 
  • Thursday, June 18 

Details will be emailed to everyone who registers.

Registration Details

Registration is a two-part process:

Step 1: Fill out the online registration form using registration link.

Step 2: Click on the confirmation link in the email you receive after filling out the online form. 

If you are a student at the Eppley Institute, you will need to register for CRGP 940 to get course credit.

Speakers Biography

John Tainer, PhD, develops and applies experimental and computational structural methods to understand and control dynamic macromolecular machines acting in DNA damage repair and cancer. He received his Ph.D. in Structural Molecular Biology from Duke University. His Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research Institute focused on computational structure analyses.
 
At Scripps, he rose to the rank of tenured Professor and directed the NSF Center for Computation in Macromolecular Structure and the Metalloprotein Structure and Design Program. He joined Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 2001, where he developed and directs the synchrotron beamline Structurally Integrated Biology for Life Sciences (SIBYLS).
 
His technologies and mathematical methods for X-ray Scattering (SAXS) are used worldwide. In 2014, he joined MD Anderson, where he received a CPRIT-Scholar Award, developed the Multi-Investigator Program for BRCA Answers from Cancer Interactome Structures (BACIS), and led the NCI Program on the Structural Cell Biology of DNA Repair. He has deposited >350 informative structures in the Protein Data Bank, which acts as an integrating hub for research worldwide. Honors include Chamberlain Mentor, Excellence in Science Awards for EXO5-BLM and MRE11-GRB2, MD Anderson President’s Award for Research Excellence 2025, and two National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Awards.
 
Tainer’s hybrid structural methods are elucidating how dynamic complexes recognize and remove DNA damage. Representative findings include specific structural mechanisms for: major DNA base excision repair enzymes (UDG, APE1, MGMT, ALKBH3), FEN1 precision in DNA replication to avoid duplications, TFIIH-XPD helicase-XPG nuclease complex in excision repair, oxidative stress and non-B DNA structures in cancer-related genomic instability, PARG and AIF in balancing PARylation damage responses, MRE11-RAD50-NBS1 and DNA-PK-Ku-XRCC4-XLF complexes in break repair pathway choice, and dual BRCA2 functional roles in replication restart and break repair. Overall, Tainer's research connects dynamic molecular structure to predictive cancer biology to develop new strategies and inhibitors for treating cancer and related diseases.
Jessica Tyler, PhD, is a tenured Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Trained as a biochemist, Dr. Tyler is recognized for her work characterizing the in vitro process of chromatin assembly after DNA synthesis and its implications for genome stability and aging in vivo.
 
Dr. Tyler earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Sheffield, where she was awarded the Hans Krebs Prize, and earned her PhD at the MRC Virology Unit in Glasgow, Scotland. During her postdoctoral studies at the University of California San Diego, she identified the key factors that package our genetic material into chromosomes using reconstituted chromatin assembly systems coupled to DNA replication.
 
In 2000, Dr. Tyler started her first faculty position in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Over the next 10 years, Dr. Tyler revealed that chromosome structure and epigenetic information play important roles in many processes, including aging. Dr. Tyler is a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow, a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Scholar, and the recipient of the Charlotte Friend Woman in Cancer Research Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). Having risen rapidly to the rank of full professor at the University of Colorado, Dr. Tyler moved in 2010 to the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at MD Anderson Cancer Center as a tenured professor and CPRIT rising star. There, she co-directed the Center for Cancer Epigenetics.
 
Dr. Tyler is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She joined Weill Cornell Medicine in 2015, where her work focuses on the interplay among epigenetics, aging, and genome stability.
Zachary Nagel, PhD, is an associate professor of genomics and cancer biology in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He teaches courses on science communication and emerging methodologies, serves as co-director of the JBL Center for Radiation Sciences, and leads an interdisciplinary team of students and postdocs with expertise in both wet and dry labs. He earned a BS in Chemistry, Biochemistry, and German at the University of Michigan (2003), followed by a PhD in Chemistry under the mentorship of Judith Klinman at UC Berkeley (2009). During his postdoctoral training under Leona Samson at MIT (2010-2016), he developed fluorescence multiplexed host cell reactivation (FM-HCR) assays. These functional assays enable cell-based measurements of all major DNA repair pathways.
 
Since 2016, as an independent investigator, Dr. Nagel has been developing new functional assays and integrating them with multiomics approaches to study the role of DNA repair in cancer susceptibility, cancer therapy responses, and the molecular mechanisms by which multiprotein DNA repair machines recognize and process DNA damage. To generate models that predict cancer susceptibility and clinical radiation sensitivity, FM-HCR is being applied to longitudinally collected primary human lymphocytes and integrated with genomics and clinical data from non-small cell lung cancer patients. To understand the etiology of mutation signatures and to identify targetable vulnerabilities in cancer cells, FM-HCR and a newly developed sequencing-based host cell reactivation assay are being applied to screen large panels of highly characterized cancer cell lines.
 
Mechanistic studies focus on understanding crosstalk between the nucleotide excision repair and mismatch repair pathways and, more broadly, on determining the functional consequences of DNA repair gene variants of unknown significance. This broad, integrative, collaborative approach is aimed at a long-term goal of establishing molecular and cellular models that enable personalized treatment and prevention of diseases caused by genome instability, with particular emphasis on cancer.
Sheila David, PhD, has been a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis since 2006. She received her B. A degree in Chemistry from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she graduated cum laude with distinction in Chemistry (1984). She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Minnesota, working with Professor Lawrence Que, Jr., where she worked on metalloenzymes (1989). As a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech with Jacqueline K. Barton, she studied metal complexes as nucleic acid probes.
 
In her independent career (at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Utah, and UC Davis), she has worked in chemical biology, with an emphasis on base excision repair (BER) glycosylases. She has developed innovative chemical and biological approaches to reveal fundamental features and clinical impacts of BER glycosylases. Notably, she was involved in the discovery of MUTYH-associated polyposis, the first inherited cancer-predisposition syndrome linked to BER. Dr. David has also been actively involved in mentoring at all levels and is particularly proud of the accomplishments of the many graduate, undergraduate, and high school students who have worked in her laboratory.
 
Professor David is the recipient of the Beckman Young Investigator Award, AP Sloan Fellowship, UCD Advance Scholar Award for Research and Mentoring, and an Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society Education Award. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society.
 
Sheila is married to RNA enthusiast Pete Beal, and they have two daughters. In addition to exploring the secret life of DNA, she enjoys hiking, dancing, eating spicy food, hanging with friends, reading, and going to plays.

Contact 

For questions, contact: 
Yvonne Rodriguez 
Cancer Research Education & Training Program Associate 
Email: yvrodriguez@unmc.edu 

Contact 

For questions, contact: 
Yvonne Rodriguez 
Cancer Research Education & Training Program Associate 
Email: yvrodriguez@unmc.edu