In honor of Nancy Klauber-DeMore, MD
Dr. Nancy Klauber-DeMore studies angiogenesis—how new blood vessels form and help tumors grow and spread. She wants to stop this. And so far she’s led research here at UNC to identify the protein SFRP2, which aids angiogenesis. Now she’s figuring out how to stop SFRP2 in its tracks.
“My ultimate goal is to create drugs to improve survival for cancer patients,” she says. “I’m very excited and hopeful about this finding; it gives us a lot of motivation.”
Dr. Klauber-DeMore has been interested in medicine ever since her physician father started taking her to his office when she was 10-years old.
“He was a big inspiration for me,” she says. He’s always been there. “When I took molecular biology in college, he went to night school to take the same course so he’d be able to discuss it with me.”
Later, she had a fellowship under the tutelage of Dr. Judah Folkman, who founded the field of angiogenesis research. His passion for his patients was contagious. And Dr. Klauber-DeMore was inspired to keep studying tumor growth and suppression.
“Every day I see patients with breast cancer and although some patients do extremely well, we still have people who die from this disease,” Klauber-DeMore says. “This is what motivates me to find better therapies.”