LITTLE ROCK -- Mayumi Nakagawa, MD, PhD, was invested April 26 as recipient of the Drs. Mae and Anderson Nettleship Chair in Oncologic Pathology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS).

She is a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Sciences in the UAMS College of Medicine and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program in the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

The Nettleship chair is the result of generous gifts by husband and wife pathologists the late Anderson Nettleship, MD, and the late Mae Nettleship, MD The chair will be used to support Nakagawa's research related to human papillomavirus (HPV) and cancer.

Nakagawa graduated from the MD/PhD program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York. After medical and graduate schools, she received her residency training in clinical pathology at the University of California at San Francisco, where she began her studies of immunity against HPV resulting not from an antibody but from a person's own cells.

After joining the faculty at UAMS in 2004, Nakagawa continued her research pursuits in the area of HPV immunology and provided patient care as an attending physician for the Transfusion Medicine Service in the Department of Pathology. Her research team's work at understanding the science of naturally occurring HPV infection, led to the design of a therapeutic vaccine for treating patients with cervical dysplasia or pre-cancer.

A phase 1 clinical trial that tested the vaccine's safety was performed from 2013-2015 and was supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A phase 2 clinical trial testing the effects of the vaccine is now underway.

Nakagawa's research group has presented their findings at many national and international scientific meetings, including at international papillomavirus conferences. She has continuously received outside funding from numerous organizations such as the NCI, Cancer Research Institute and the American Cancer Society.