Richard White, M.D., Ph.D, is a physician-scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College. He is interested in basic mechanisms underlying metastasis, using the zebrafish as a model system. His work has established numerous techniques for cancer modeling and high-resolution imaging in the fish. Using these tools, the lab is focused on the cross-talk between tumor cells and the microenvironment, and how this interplay influences metastatic success. Using a zebrafish melanoma model, his lab demonstrated that early melanomas resemble neural crest stem cells, but as they progress they contain a mixture of both stem and non-stem like cells. These two cell states cooperate in the seeding of metastasis. More recently, his lab has uncovered novel interactions between melanoma cells and adipocytes in the microenvironment. These lipid containing cells can donate fatty acids to the invading tumor cell populations. One implication of this is that targeting of the melanoma/adipocyte interaction may offer therapeutic potential in preventing metastasis to distant organs. He has been awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pershing Square Foundation Award, and the Mark Foundation ASPIRE award.