The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Irving Weissman, M.D., director, Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine; V&D Ludwig Professor of Clinical Cancer Research; and professor, departments of developmental biology, pathology and neurosurgery and biology, Stanford University School of Medicine

Speaker bio(s)

Following embryonic development, most of our tissues and organs are continuously regenerated from tissue/organ specific stem cells. The principal property that distinguishes such stem cells from their daughter cells is self-renewal; when stem cells divide they give rise to stem cells (by self-renewal) and progenitors (by differentiation). In most tissues only the primitive stem cells self-renew. Stem cell isolation and transplantation is the basis for regenerative medicine. Self-renewal is dangerous, and therefore strictly regulated. Poorly regulated self-renewal can lead to the genesis of cancer stem cells, the only self-renewing cells in the cancerous tumor. The Weissman lab has followed the progression from hematopoietic stem cells to myelogenous leukemias. They have found that the developing cancer clones progress at the stage of hematopoietic stem cells, until they become fully malignant. At this point, the "leukemia" stem cell moves to a stage of a downstream oligolineage or multilineage progenitor that has evaded programmed cell death and programmed cell removal, while acquiring or keeping self-renewal. While there are many ways to defeat programmed cell death and senescence, there appears to be one dominant method to avoid programmed cell removal — the expression of the cell surface "don’t-eat-me" protein CD47, the ligand for macrophage SIRP-alpha. All cancers tested express CD47 to overcome expression of "eat-me" signals such as calreticulin and asialogylycoproteins. Antibodies that block the CD47–SIRP-alpha interaction enable phagocytosis and killing of the tumor cells in vitro and in vivo.

Dr. Weissman received his B.S. from Montana State University and an M.D. from Stanford University. During medical school he did research on thymus cell migration with Jim Gowans at Oxford University. He was a postdoctoral research associate in Dr. H. S. Kaplan’s department at Stanford University, and was appointed a faculty position in the department of pathology at Stanford School of Medicine in 1969. He has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Karel Beekhuis Professor of Cancer Biology and chair of the Immunology Program. In 2002 he became director of the Stanford Cancer/Stem Cell Institute, which was split into the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Stanford Cancer Center in 2003. Dr. Weissman was director of both institutes and remains director of the Stem Cell Institute, which will house the first Ph.D. program devoted to stem cell biology in the nation.

Among his awards and honors are the 2010 Simon M. Shubitz Award for Excellence in the Field of Cancer Research, from the University of Chicago; the 2009 Passano Award; the 2004 Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, National Academy of Sciences Council; the 2003 J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine; the 2002 Van Bekkum Stem Cell Award; the 1999 E. Donnall Thomas Prize to recognize pioneering research achievements in hematology, from the American Society of Hematology; the 1999 Leukemia Society of America de Villier’s International Achievement Award; and the 1989 Pasarow Award for Outstanding Contribution to Cancer Biology. He was named California Scientist of the Year in 2002 and the Irvington Institute Immunologist of the Year in 2001. Dr. Weissman was also elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences. He served as president of the American Association of Immunologists in 1994.
 

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Alena Powell

Phone

(212) 327-7745

Sponsor

Alena Powell
(212) 327-7745
apowell@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=3191