Robert Weinberg

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Robert Allan Weinberg
Born (1942-11-11) November 11, 1942 (age 69)
Nationality American
Fields Genetics
Institutions Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Whitehead Institute

Robert Allan Weinberg (born November 11, 1942) is a Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and American Cancer Society Research Professor; his research is in the area of oncogenes and the genetic basis of human cancer. Weinberg is also affiliated with the Broad Institute and is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He co-teaches 7.012 (introductory biology) with Eric Lander.

Contents

Research

He is best known for his discoveries of the first human oncogene Ras and the first tumor supressor gene Rb[1]p. 371-381, which is partially documented in Natalie Angiers book, Natural Obsessions, about her year spent in Weinberg's lab.

In the late 20th century, advances in genetics lead to the discovery of over 100 cancer cell types. Cancer cells were noted for their bewildering diversity. It was hard to identify the principles that cancers had in common. He and Douglas Hanahan wrote the seminal paper, "The Hallmarks of Cancer", published in January 2000,[2] that gave the 6 requirements for one renegade cell to cause a deadly cancer:[1]p.390-391

Summary
Capability Simple Explanation/Analogy
Self-sufficiency in growth signals "accelerator pedal stuck on"
Insensitivity to anti-growth signals "brakes don't work"
Evading apoptosis won't die when the body normally would kill the defective cell
Limitless replicative potential infinite generations of descendents
Sustained angiogenesis asking the body to give it a blood supply
Tissue invasion and metastasis migrating and spreading to other organs and tissues

He is well known for both his brilliance in cancer research and for his mentorship of many eminent scientists. He is currently studying cancer cell metastasis[3]

He is also the author of the textbook The Biology of Cancer published by Garland Science.

Awards

He won the National Medal of Science and the Keio Medical Science Prize in 1997, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2004 (shared with Roger Y. Tsien), and he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2007 he received an honorary doctorate degree in commemoration of Linnaeus from Uppsala University. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 1992.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010). The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-0795-9. OCLC 464593321. 
  2. ^ Hanahan, Douglas; Weinberg, RA (January 7, 2000). "The Hallmarks of Cancer". Cell 100 (1): 57–70. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81683-9. ISSN 00928674. PMID 10647931. 
  3. ^ Christine L. Chaffer; Robert A. Weinberg (March 25, 2011). "A perspective on Cancer Cell Metastasis". Science 331 (6024): 1559–1564. doi:10.1126/science.1203543. PMID 21436443. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6024/1559. 
  4. ^ "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Robert Weinberg". http://www.kva.se/en/Members/Ledamoter-page/?personId=679. Retrieved 2009-09-27. [dead link]

Further reading

  • Tabin, C.J., Bradley, S.M., Bargmann, C.I., Weinberg, R.A., Papageorge, A.G., Scolnick, E.M., Dhar, R., Lowy, D.R., and Chang, E.H. (1982). "Mechanism of activation of a human oncogene". Nature 300 (5888): 143–149. doi:10.1038/300143a0. PMID 6290897. 
  • Hahn, W.C., Counter, C.M., Lundberg, A.S., Beijersbergen, R.L., Brooks, M.W., and Weinberg, R.A. (1999). "Creation of human tumor cells with defined genetic elements". Nature 400 (6743): 464–468. doi:10.1038/22780. PMID 10440377. 

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