ULM graduate student Shibu Thomas won the $1,000 first prize for research presentation at the Third National Prostate Cancer Symposium in Atlanta, Ga. March 19 – 20.

Thomas, studying with Girish Shah, ULM professor of basic pharmaceutical sciences, also received a $500 travel award for his talk, titled: “RNA interference-directed silencing of calcitonin receptor expression induces apoptosis and growth arrest of human prostate cancer cells in vivo.” His presentation regarded the causes of tumors becoming metastatic, or a life-threatening disease.