Pathology prof. wins research awards

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Professor Frederic Barr has received two national research awards. Barr is the first person within the University Medical Center to receive both the Benjamin Castleman Award and the Arthur Purdy Stout Annual Prize in the same year. Barr, who is the director of the University's Solid Tumor Molecular Diagnosis Lab, explained that he has done extensive work in the areas of molecular biology and diagnostic pathology. He added that his field of expertise is the pathology of tumors, specifically various types of cancers. Both awards are given annually for outstanding work in pathology by "young and promising" pathologists or pathology residents, according to Barr. Guidelines stipulate that the recipients be under the age of 40 during 1995. The Castleman Award is presented for any outstanding paper in the field of human pathology published in English during the 1995 calendar year. The Stout Award recognizes significant career achievements in the field of surgical pathology. Barr said his work deals with certain cancers that appear repeatedly in children. As a diagnostic pathologist, Barr uses a variety of tools, including microscopic examination, to determine the particular disease associated with a condition. "These pediatric cancers have been notoriously hard to diagnose and have earned the name 'small round cell tumors' because they do simply look like small round cells," he explained. New additions to research -- including electromicroscopy, immunology and, most recently, microbiology -- have allowed the field of cancer research to grow by leaps and bounds, Barr said. He noted that researchers have been able to start categorizing these cancers earlier because of the discovery of new microbiological clues -- some of which have been made in the lab Barr directs. Barr began his residency at the University in 1987, becoming a faculty member in 1992. He said he has been interested in cancer since he was in medical school. "I was interested in understanding 'what is this complex thing we call cancer,' " he said. "There is no one thing called cancer -- it is many collective diseases." He said one of the key elements to treating cancer is "knowing what we're treating." "For years, pathologists have looked for clues on how to identify these cancers," he said. "Now microbiology has added a new set of markers."