The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP) has created the DCP Early Career Scientist Spotlight Research Seminar Series to highlight nominated early career scientists who are advancing research within the areas supported by DCP. The overall goal of this ongoing seminar series is to increase visibility and provide recognition to these DCP Early Career Scientists.
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Key information
- Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2026
- Time: 11:00am EDT to 12:00pm EDT
- Location: Virtual via WebEx
Registration Information
Registration is required.
Speakers
Nutrient Stress to Neoplasia: Uncovering Metabolic Drivers of Hepatocellular Transformation
Jessica E. S. Shay, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of Utah
Biography
Dr. Jessica E. S. Shay is a physician-scientist whose career bridges clinical hepatology and metabolic research. She earned her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where she developed an early interest in how metabolism regulates tissue repair and cancer. She completed internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, gastroenterology and hepatology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, and postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying how dietary and metabolic cues influence stem cell and tissue behavior.
Dr. Shay is now an Assistant Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at the University of Utah, with additional appointments in the newly renamed Center for Metabolic Health and affiliate status at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Her focus is on how metabolic reprogramming in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) shapes hepatocyte identity, regeneration, and tumorigenesis, with the goal of identifying metabolic strategies to prevent liver cancer.
Fitness Assessment and Optimization in Older Adults with AML: A Focus on Sarcopenia
Samuel Yates, MD, MSc
Fellow (PGY-6), Department of Hematology and Oncology, University of Chicago
Biography
The long-term goal of Dr. Yates’s research is to improve the fitness for chemotherapy of older adults with leukemia via targeting sarcopenia to improve physical function. He completed an MD/MSc at Wake Forest with a master’s thesis assessing the prognostic significance of bioelectrical impedance analysis for early death in adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). He built upon this work with an investigator-initiated trial (NCT05458258) assessing the impact of sarcopenia in addition to the gold standard fitness assessment tool, a comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), on early death in older adults with AML.
He is currently leading a pilot feasibility trial of a nutrition and exercise intervention in adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (NCT06785324). Upon completion of his fellowship from the University of Chicago he will join the faculty at Wake Forest as a physician scientist in the Department of Cancer Medicine and sections of Geriatric Oncology and Leukemia.