海角社区

Antonio Giordano, MD, PhD, is an oncologist and geneticist, as well as founder and president of the Sbarro Health Research Organization and director of the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He works on molecular therapeutics and also studies the connections between obesity and cancer. Antonio Giordano grew up in Naples, Italy, where his father, Giovan Giacomo Giordano, was an oncologist and pathologist at the National Cancer Institute of Naples and a professor at the University of Naples. Giordano decided to branch out and start a career in research that was more oriented towards genetics applied to pathology. Early on, while following his father's research, he became interested in the link between the effect of toxic waste on the environment and the increasing cancer rates in the Campania region in Italy. Giordano earned his medical degree at the University of Naples in 1986, and his doctorate at the University of Trieste in 1990. He has published over 600 papers on gene therapy, cell cycle, genetics of cancer, and epidemiology. His early research includes seminal work done in 1989, demonstrating the importance of cell cycle proteins in the functioning of DNA tumor viruses. The transforming gene products of these viruses, such as the E1A oncoproteins of adenovirus 5, led to the identification of cellular factor p60, known as cyclin A. This research was the first demonstration of a physical link between cellular transformation and the cell cycle, thereby paving the way for the melding of these two areas of research. It also helped to open a very exciting avenue of research involving investigators with expertise in different aspects of growth control and cancer.Giordano’s lab also discovered the tumor suppressor gene RB2/p130 and the cell cycle kinases CDK9 and CDK10, two other key players in cell cycle regulation and cell differentiation. Antonio Giordano is the recipient of the Irving J. Selikoff Award for Cancer Research, the Rotary International Award, and Lions Club Napoli-Europa. He has also received the title of Knight of the Republic and Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. At the 25th anniversary of the National Organization of Italian American Women, he was awarded the Cross of Merit Melitense, an honor of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. www.shro.org www.drantoniogiordano.com

Dr. Walter has spent his 28-year academic career at a primarily undergraduate campus that has just recently been designated an 鈥淓merging Research Institution.鈥� He has served in the Department of Biology (9 years) and then moved to the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry to assist in development of a Biochemistry undergraduate program. Dr. Walter developed partnership grant proposals aimed towards providing scholarships for student groups that are underrepresented in the sciences (URM). In Fall 2013, he was awarded a Bridges to Biomedicine (B2B) grant wherein Texas State University is partnering with two Alamo Community College campuses to establish a program focused on increasing success of URM students in the biomedical sciences upon transfer to the baccalaureate institution. The B2B program addresses the most important obstacles to upper-division degree completion experienced by students showing an early commitment to a biomedical career. Additionally, Dr. Walter serves as Co-PI for the South Texas Doctoral Bridge Program (STDBP).  The STDBP is aimed at student matriculation from the MS degree into highly competitive doctoral programs. The STDBP is established between the Univ. of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA, medical school) and Texas State University. The STDBP is designed to provide a combination of mentoring and student development activities as well as enhance didactics and research training during a thesis-based M.S. degree in Biochemistry.

Joshua LaBaer is renowned for his work in proteomics and developing biomarker diagnostics. He leads ASU's COVID-19 research efforts. 

As executive director of the Biodesign Institute, his work emphasizes that multidisciplinary factors culminate to disease, suggesting personalized therapies and unique biomarker analysis. His team uses arrays to assess how programmable a protein is. This work also spans into epigenetics, and the capacity to modulate the activity of these proteins.

LaBaer was the founder and director of Harvard's Institute of Proteomics and a chairman of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Proteome Research, a member of the National Cancer Institute's Board of Scientific Advisors, chair of the Early Detection Research Network Steering Committee and recent president of the U.S. Human Proteome Organization.

Mackay is recognized as one of the world鈥檚 leading authorities on the genetics of complex traits, a field of study concerning the mitigation of aging and disease, that has seen exponential growth in the last decade with advances in technology that Mackay has placed herself squarely on the forefront of. As director of the Center for Human Genetics and a fellow of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, Mackay is a world leader in groundbreaking research that reveals the genetic and environmental basis of human diseases.

Only about 2 percent of the human genome codes for proteins, the building blocks of the human body, are known. Mackay pioneered a research model based on the common fruit fly because about 70 percent of the fruit fly genome has a human counterpart. Through collaborations with other institutions (like the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute for Drug Abuse and the Greenwood Genetics Center) and other top scientists, she uses her model to explore the 98 percent that is unknown, hoping to find pathways that can lead to cures for terminal and mental illnesses that affect people globally and have so far stumped doctors and scientists. The partnerships give her a heightened ability to quickly and efficiently translate basic research into tangible treatment options.

Mackay and her seasoned team of geneticists, including her husband, Robert Anholt, work out of state-of-the-art laboratory facilities on the Clemson University innovation campus, a part of the Greenwood Genetic Center Partnership Campus.  There she uses her 30-plus years of experience to add to a long history of clinical and research excellence in the field of medical genetics, which in turn is used to improve the lives of families impacted by genetic disease and congenital disabilities. Ultimately, her research will translate to effective treatments for those diseases and will also help inform potential treatments for others.

Mackay is a recipient of Trinity College鈥檚 Dawson Prize in Genetics, which is awarded to geneticists of international prominence, and numerous other accolades including being a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of London.

Dr. Jeremy Nathans is a professor of molecular biology and genetics, neuroscience and ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research focuses on molecular mechanisms of visual system development, function, and disease.

Dr. Nathans is responsible for landmark discoveries that have changed our understanding of how humans see the world. His investigations into the mechanisms that allow us to see colors led him to identify the genes that code for color-vision receptors in the light-sensing cones of the retina. This breakthrough finding allowed him to show that variations in these genes cause color blindness. His work has also led to new understandings of the development, function and survival of the retina.

Dr. Nathans received his undergraduate degree in Life Sciences and Chemistry from MIT and earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and M.D. from Stanford University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Genentech, Inc. Dr. Nathans joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1988.

He serves on the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is on many scientific advisory boards including The Foundation Fighting Blindness and Merck Research Laboratories. He became a member of the Institute of Medicine in 2011 and his work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience by the McGovern Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Auslander focuses on developing machine learning methods to understand genetic and infectious factors that drive cancer evolution and identify patterns that can improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Auslander earned her B.S. in computer science and biology from Tel Aviv University and continued her studies in Maryland, where she obtained a computer science Ph.D. from the University of Maryland with a combined fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. She received postdoctoral training at the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and joined The Wistar Institute in 2021 as an assistant professor.

Gardini studies the epigenetic control of transcription during cell differentiation and oncogenesis.

Born and raised in Italy, Gardini obtained a B.S./M.S. in medical biotechnology at the University of Bologna and attended the graduate school of Molecular Medicine at the University of Milan. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Ramin Shiekhattar at the Center of Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, The Wistar Institute and the University of Miami Medical School. He joined Wistar as an assistant professor in 2015. Gardini is a scholar of the Leukemia Research Foundation and the American Cancer Society.

Geneticist Bill Cresko studies the genomic basis of evolutionary change using comparative studies of natural populations in the wild and experimental approaches in the laboratory. He uses the threespine stickleback fish as his primary model to understand how molecular genetic variation can modify networks of genes and proteins to produce variation in evolutionarily important traits. Most recently, his lab has developed stickleback as a model for studies of how host genetic variation can influence their associated microbial communities. His lab is also well known for developing genomic tools (e.g. RAD-seq) and super-computing software (e.g. Stacks), both of which are now used by thousands of scientists around the world. Cresko鈥檚 group has published nearly 100 papers that have been cited thousands of times. In addition to several prestigious fellowships throughout his education from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), Cresko received the Fund for Faculty Excellence Award from the University in 2013 and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016. 

Cresko holds numerous leadership roles on campus. He is associate vice president of research and leader of the Presidential Initiative in Data Science and a member of the Internal Advisory Board at the University for the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact (KCASI). 

Work in his laboratory has been supported by grants from the NIH, NSF, the Murdock Charitable Trust and the W. M. Keck Foundation. Cresko co-founded the Applied Graduate Internship Program in Genomics and Bioinformatics, an interdisciplinary training program at UO, which is now part of KCASI. He has also provided key faculty leadership for over $600 million dollars in philanthropic donations to the University of Oregon over the last decade, primarily in support of research, including the largest single gift to a comprehensive public university from Phil and Penny Knight. 

Daniel Grimes uses genetic, genomic, and imaging procedures to study how symmetries are broken and maintained during embryonic development and growth, and to understand how they contribute to human diseases, including birth defects and scoliosis. He received an NIH Maximizing Investigators鈥� Research Award in 2022. A member of the UO faculty since 2019, Grimes received his master鈥檚 degree in molecular and cellular biochemistry with honors, and his PhD in developmental genetics, from the University of Oxford.

Domenico Praticò is a Professor of Neural Science at the . He obtained his medical degree from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” School of Medicine, where he also completed a residency program in Internal Medicine. He continued his post-graduate training as a Research Fellow of the Center for Cardiovascular Science at the University College, Dublin, Ireland. Next, he pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in the biology of aging at the University of Pennsylvania, where shortly after he was promoted to Assistant Professor, and later Associate Professor. In 2007 he joined Temple University, School of Medicine, as Associate Professor and Director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Laboratory. Since 2011 he has been Professor of Neural Sciences at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. In December 2017, he was nominated the Scott Richards North Star Foundation Chair in Alzheimer’s research and appointed as the founding Director of the Alzheimer’s Center at Temple. His main area of investigation is clinical pharmacology with a special focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in brain health, brain aging, and the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia. His early research includes pioneering work on the development of specific and sensitive methods to measure oxidative stress in vivo, which was instrumental for the first demonstration that brain oxidative stress is an early event in Alzheimer’s Disease pathogenesis. In addition, his work helped in defining the source and functional role that neuroinflammation plays in neurodegeneration. Pratico’s lab has been on the forefront in the effort to unravel the mechanisms responsible for the effect that dietary lifestyle has on brain health, providing evidence that extra virgin olive oil beneficial effects are secondary to the activation of important intracellular degradation pathways of unwanted materials. His group was the first to demonstrate that intracellular sorting and transport of protein is essential for neuronal health and that it can be a viable therapeutic target when it is dysfunctional. During these years, the main goal of his work has always been translating studies of the basic biology of brain aging and neurodegeneration into new therapeutics by implementing a comprehensive experimental approach which combines in vitro and in vivo models as well as human studies. Internationally known for his work on Alzheimer’s disease, brain health, aging and neurodegeneration, Dr. Pratico has authored over 290 original articles in high impact journals, and more than 25 chapters in thematic books. During his career, he has received many awards for his research accomplishments including the Irvine H. Page Award, Neuroscience Education and Research Award, Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and Dorothy Dillon Eweson Lectureship from the American Federation for Aging Research, and the Paul W. Eberman Faculty Research Award, and The Marconi Science Award.

Andrew Leakey is Professor and Head of the Plant Biology Department, in addition to Director for the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) and adjunct faculty in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Leakey is now working on the RIPE Project with a focus on stomatal conductance. Leakey brings 20 years of experience researching the interface of physiology, genetics, and molecular biology. Leakey earned his Bachelor of Science in 1998 at the University of Sheffield, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 2003. He completed a postdoc in Steve Long’s lab from 2004-2007, then became a research fellow at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Leakey’s research broadly addresses the need to improve the understanding of how the environment impacts ecosystem goods and services while advancing efforts to improve and protect crop production and water cycling. His focus within RIPE is to understand the genetic and physiological controls of stomatal patterning and photosynthetic water-use efficiency (WUE) through a combination of molecular genetics, quantitative genetics, and physiology.

 uses supercomputing and DNA sequencing to solve problems in plant, animal, and human genetics. His current research focuses on how crops are bred and on ways to treat and prevent plant, animal, and human diseases. He is particularly interested in the genetics of crop traits and the genetic and molecular interactions of soybeans with pathogens, pests, and other organisms.
More information: Hudson's research interests center on the use of high-performance computational techniques to pursue questions in genomic biology. His research program focuses on the genomic variants that control trait variation in plants, nonhuman animals and human populations, funded by grants from the NSF, DOE, and USDA as well as private companies, foundations, and commodity boards. He teaches award-winning classes at Illinois on the interface between biology and computing.
Affiliations: Hudson is a professor in the , part of the  (ACES) at U. of I. He is also co-director of the , science integration chair for the  (CABBI), and faculty affiliate at the .

The DiMaio laboratory is studying the molecular mechanisms of how human papillomaviruses enter cells, with a particular focus on identifying the cellular proteins that mediate virus entry and intracellular trafficking and determining their molecular mechanisms of action. In addition, it is using viral transmembrane proteins as a basis to develop a class of artificial small transmembrane proteins with a variety of biological activities, including the ability to form tumors and confer resistance to virus infection. Some of these proteins are the simplest proteins ever described and their study will reveal new features of protein action and the basis for specificity in protein-protein interactions.

Lisette P. Waits is an American ecologist. She is a Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Resources at the University of Idaho's College of Natural Resources. In 2017, Waits was elected a Fellow of the  for her "contributions to research and teaching in conservation genetics, wildlife and conservation biology, and for development of techniques for the non-invasive sampling of DNA."

Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, is a medical oncologist who specializes in breast cancer. He is the co-director of the Genomics, Genetics, and Epigenetics Program at the Yale Cancer Center.
He says he enjoys the delicate work of helping patients overcome the fear and shock of a breast cancer diagnosis. “I ensure that they maximize their chance of cure through the best available treatments,” he says. “I also love the research component of my job, to push the boundaries of existing knowledge and developing new therapies.”
Dr. Pusztai says he gravitated to medical oncology at the beginning of his career because of an inspiring mentor, and that the best part of his job is seeing patients remain disease-free for years and continuing with their life.
He is chair of the Breast Cancer Research Committee of the South West Oncology Group (SWOG), a global cancer research community that designs and conducts publicly funded clinical trials. His research group has made important contributions to establish that estrogen receptor-positive and-negative breast cancers have fundamentally different molecular, clinical, and epidemiological characteristics.
He has been a pioneer in evaluating gene expression profiling as a diagnostic technology to predict chemotherapy and endocrine therapy sensitivity and has shown that different biological processes are involved in determining the prognosis and treatment response in different breast cancer subtypes. Dr. Pusztai is also the principal investigator of several clinical trials investigating new drugs, including immunotherapies for breast cancer.

I am a breast medical oncologist and serve as the Medical Co-Director for Cancer Survivorship and Translational Behavioral Science Program at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. I am also the Associate Director of Community Outreach of the Breast Cancer Program at Sylvester-Plantation. Since graduating from a Hematology Oncology Fellowship in 2008, I dedicated my career exclusively to building expertise in breast cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship. Immediately after my fellowship, I joined Memorial Cancer Institute in Broward County, where I had the privilege to participate in several committees focused on patient satisfaction and quality improvement.

My goal was always to provide outstanding care that not only offers standard treatments but participation in vital clinical trials that offer patients innovative treatments before their approval. I served as a member of the local IRB for 8 years prior to 2015, when I joined University of Miami. Since joining our institution, I was invited to become a PRMC member and a member of Social Behavior committee. I value this committee and their role of making sure best research is available to our patients, not only scientifically but also ethically. I am committed to bringing new trials to our Breast Cancer Program and I am serving as a Principal Investigator on more than 10 clinical trials at the present time. I am the chair-elect for the ASCO lead TAPUR clinical trial and the local PI for TAPUR.

I have worked closely with Dr. Crane and her team on this application entitled, Comparative Effectiveness of Lifestyle Interventions for Older Cancer Survivors and Their Caregivers: the VITALITY Trial and will serve as Co-Investigator for this study. I will serve as a champion for this study for recruitment and provide my clinical oncology expertise in breast cancer to address participant related issues that may arise during this study including determining patient eligibility on a case by case basis, participate in regular research meeting, data interpretation and dissemination of findings.

 conducts genetic studies on wildlife and domesticated animals. He uses DNA from elephants to determine conservation priorities for the species and to establish the geographic origins of confiscated ivory. He also studies “endogenous” retroviruses, which are retroviral copies that have become permanent components of the DNA of humans and animals, and can impact their health.
Roca is a professor in the , part of the  at the . He is also affiliated with the , the , and the  at Illinois. 

Cari Vanderpool is a professor of microbiology and the associate dean for research in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois.
She joined the University of Illinois faculty in 2006 after completing her PhD at the University of Minnesota and postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on the fundamental biology of bacteria and the viruses that infect them (bacteriophages or phages). Her research group uses tools of biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, and genomics to investigate bacterial interactions with each other and with their plant and animal hosts. One of the overall goals of her research is to understand how bacteria sense different environmental conditions and respond by changing their gene expression, cellular structure, and behaviors in ways that allow them to succeed in very diverse and sometimes harsh environments. This work is necessary to reveal how bacteria in the complex communities known as microbiomes contribute to human and animal and plant health.  
Phages are the most abundant biological entity on the planet and bacteria must constantly defend themselves against this natural predator. Dr. Vanderpool’s group is studying how phages interact with an array of bacterial species and how these interactions shape bacterial populations in a variety of natural environments, from the human gut to the soil. Bacteria are engaged in an “arms race” with the phages that target them, characterized by bacterial defense and phage counter-defense mechanisms and Dr. Vanderpool’s group is also studying these processes. There is a great deal of interest in harnessing the natural bacterial killing properties of phages for a range of biotechnology applications. Phages show special promise as an alternative to antibiotic therapies, and thus may help solve the looming antibiotic resistance crisis. Dr. Vanderpool’s group is embarking on new applied research directions that may lead to breakthroughs in use of phages as therapies for a range of human diseases.
For more about her research, visit . 

Research Topics
Genetics, Genomics, Metabolic Regulation, Microbial Physiology, Regulation of Gene Expression, RNA Biology, Signal Transduction

Education

BS Microbiology, Purdue University, 1998
PhD Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, University of Minnesota, 1998-2003
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Cancer Institute, 2003-2006