Robert Weinberg (biologist)

Last updated

Robert Weinberg
Born
Robert Allan Weinberg

(1942-11-11) November 11, 1942 (age 81)
Pittsburgh
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater MIT (Ph.D)
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Molecular Biology, Oncology, and Genetics
Institutions
Doctoral students
Website weinberglab.wi.mit.edu

Robert Allan Weinberg (born November 11, 1942) is a biologist, Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), director of the Ludwig Center of the MIT, and American Cancer Society Research Professor. His research is in the area of oncogenes and the genetic basis of human cancer. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Robert Weinberg is also affiliated with the Broad Institute and is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. [5] Weinberg and Eric Lander, a colleague at M.I.T., are co-founders of Verastem, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing drugs to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells. [6]

Career

Weinberg earned SB in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and PhD in biology from the same institute in 1969. He was an instructor in biology at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (1965–1966), and a postdoc in Ernest Winocour's lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science (1969–1970) and in Renato Dulbecco's lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1970–1972). He joined MIT in 1972. [7]

Research

He is best known for his discoveries of the first human oncogene Ras and the first tumor suppressor gene Rb [8] p. 371-381, which is partially documented in Natalie Angier′s book, Natural Obsessions, about her year spent in Weinberg's lab.

In the late 20th century, advances in genetics led to the discovery of over one hundred 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, [9] that gave the six requirements for one renegade cell to cause a deadly cancer: [8] In 2011, they published an updated review article entitled "Hallmarks of cancer: the next generation". [10]

Summary
CapabilitySimple 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 potentialinfinite generations of descendants
Sustained angiogenesis asking the body to give it a blood supply
Tissue invasion and metastasis migrating and spreading to other organs and tissues

Weinberg is well known for both his cancer research [11] and for his mentorship of many eminent scientists, including Tyler Jacks, William C. Hahn, Clifford Tabin and Cornelia Bargmann. He is currently studying cancer cell metastasis. [12]

He is also the author of the textbook The Biology of Cancer [1] published by Garland Science, as well as two important accounts intended for a wider audience: One Renegade Cell: How Cancer Begins (1999) (Science Masters Series); and Racing to the Beginning of the Road: The Search for the Origin of Cancer (1996).

As of 2021, Weinberg has an h-index of 209 according to Google Scholar. [13]

Awards and honors

In 1985, Weinberg received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. [14] Weinberg won the National Medal of Science and the Keio Medical Science Prize in 1997. In 1999, he received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in recognition of his valuable and pioneering contributions in the field of Biomedical Sciences and for his productive trajectory related to the genetic and molecular basis of neoplastic disease. [15] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2000. [16] He obtained 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. [17] In 2009 he was presented the Hope Funds Award in Basic Research. [18] In 2013 he was awarded the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for his work [19] and in 2021 he received the Japan Prize. [20]

Retractions

To this day Weinberg has had five research papers retracted where he is listed as a co-author. The retractions include one paper in Cell, one in Cancer Cell, two in Genes & Development and one in Cancer Research. [21] [22] [23] [24]

The reasons given for the retraction of one paper (DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2009.03.04) include: "Falsification/Fabrication of Data" and "Manipulation of Results".

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oncogene</span> Gene that has the potential to cause cancer

An oncogene is a gene that has the potential to cause cancer. In tumor cells, these genes are often mutated, or expressed at high levels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Baltimore</span> American biologist (born 1938)

David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he served as president from 1997 to 2006. He founded the Whitehead Institute and directed it from 1982 to 1990. In 2008, he served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">H. Robert Horvitz</span> American biologist

Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM is an American biologist best known for his research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston, whose "seminal discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" were "important for medical research and have shed new light on the pathogenesis of many diseases".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold E. Varmus</span> American scientist (born 1939)

Harold Eliot Varmus is an American Nobel Prize-winning scientist. He is currently the Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and a senior associate at the New York Genome Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phillip Allen Sharp</span> American geneticist and molecular biologist

Phillip Allen Sharp is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He has been selected to receive the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert G. Roeder</span>

Robert G. Roeder is an American biochemist. He is known as a pioneer scientist in eukaryotic transcription. He discovered three distinct nuclear RNA polymerases in 1969 and characterized many proteins involved in the regulation of transcription, including basic transcription factors and the first mammalian gene-specific activator over five decades of research. He is the recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award in 2000, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 2003, and the Kyoto Prize in 2021. He currently serves as Arnold and Mabel Beckman Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Biochemical and Molecular Biology at The Rockefeller University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudolf Jaenisch</span> German biologist

Rudolf Jaenisch is a Professor of Biology at MIT and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is a pioneer of transgenic science, in which an animal’s genetic makeup is altered. Jaenisch has focused on creating genetically modified mice to study cancer, epigenetic reprogramming and neurological diseases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Bargmann</span> American neurobiologist

Cornelia Isabella "Cori" Bargmann is an American neurobiologist. She is known for her work on the genetic and neural circuit mechanisms of behavior using C. elegans, particularly the mechanisms of olfaction in the worm. She has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and had been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UCSF and then Rockefeller University from 1995 to 2016. She was the Head of Science at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative from 2016 to 2022. In 2012 she was awarded the $1 million Kavli Prize, and in 2013 the $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chiaho Shih</span>

Chiaho Shih is a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Division of Infectious Disease & Immunology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. His research is in the area of Molecular virology, Viral hepatitis and Hepatoma, and Cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angelika Amon</span> Austrian American academic molecular and cell biologist (1967–2020)

Angelika Amon was an Austrian American molecular and cell biologist, and the Kathleen and Curtis Marble Professor in Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Amon's research centered on how chromosomes are regulated, duplicated, and partitioned in the cell cycle. Amon was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stuart A. Aaronson</span> Author and cancer biologist

Stuart A. Aaronson is an American author and cancer biologist. He has authored more than 500 publications and holds over 50 patents, and was the Jane B. and Jack R. Aron Professor of Neoplastic Diseases and Chairman of Oncological Sciences at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City until March 2013, when he assumed the title of Founding Chair Emeritus of the Department of Oncological Sciences. The current Chairman of Oncological Sciences is Ramon E. Parsons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Hallmarks of Cancer</span> 2000 paper by Hanahan and Weinberg

The hallmarks of cancer were originally six biological capabilities acquired during the multistep development of human tumors and have since been increased to eight capabilities and two enabling capabilities. The idea was coined by Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg in their paper "The Hallmarks of Cancer" published January 2000 in Cell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Hanahan</span> American biologist

Douglas Hanahan is an American biologist, professor and director emeritus of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is currently member of the Lausanne branch of the Ludwig Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joan Massagué</span> Spanish biologist

Joan Massagué, is a Spanish biologist and the current director of the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is also an internationally recognized leader in the study of both cancer metastasis and growth factors that regulate cell behavior, as well as a professor at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Sabatini</span> American scientist who co-discovered mTOR

David M. Sabatini is an American scientist and a former professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2002 to 2021, he was a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He was also an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 2008 to 2021 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. He is known for his contributions in the areas of cell signaling and cancer metabolism, most notably the co-discovery of mTOR.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clifford Tabin</span> American geneticist

Clifford James Tabin is chairman of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Ed Harlow is an American molecular biologist.

Breast cancer metastatic mouse models are experimental approaches in which mice are genetically manipulated to develop a mammary tumor leading to distant focal lesions of mammary epithelium created by metastasis. Mammary cancers in mice can be caused by genetic mutations that have been identified in human cancer. This means models can be generated based upon molecular lesions consistent with the human disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott W. Lowe</span> American geneticist

Scott William Lowe is Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is recognized for his research on the tumor suppressor gene, p53, which is mutated in nearly half of cancers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Marais</span> Cancer researcher

Richard Malcolm Marais is Director of the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Manchester Institute and Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Manchester.

References

  1. 1 2 Weinberg, Robert (2007). The Biology of Cancer. Garland Science (published 2006). ISBN   978-0-8153-4076-8. OCLC   63114199.
  2. ↑ Shih, C.; Weinberg, R. A. (1982). "Isolation of a transforming sequence from a human bladder carcinoma cell line". Cell. 29 (1): 161–9. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(82)90100-3. PMID   6286138. S2CID   12046552.
  3. ↑ Weinberg, R. A.; Hahn, W. C.; Counter, C. M.; Lundberg, A. S.; Beijersbergen, R. L.; Brooks, M. W. (1999). "Creation of human tumour cells with defined genetic elements". Nature. 400 (6743): 464–8. Bibcode:1999Natur.400..464H. doi:10.1038/22780. PMID   10440377. S2CID   2377425.
  4. ↑ Mani, S. A.; Guo, W.; Liao, M. J.; Eaton, E. N.; Ayyanan, A.; Zhou, A. Y.; Brooks, M.; Reinhard, F.; Zhang, C. C.; Shipitsin, M.; Campbell, L. L.; Polyak, K.; Brisken, C.; Yang, J.; Weinberg, R. A. (2008). "The Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Generates Cells with Properties of Stem Cells". Cell. 133 (4): 704–15. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.03.027. PMC   2728032 . PMID   18485877.
  5. ↑ "The Deadly Side of Cancer: How Cancer Spreads with Robert Weinberg – DF/HCC". www.dfhcc.harvard.edu.
  6. ↑ "News Release - Novel Drugs Targeting Cancer Stem Cells". phx.corporate-ir.net. Archived from the original on January 7, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2022.
  7. ↑ "CV (Robert A. Weinberg)" (PDF). Paris Sciences et Lettres University. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
  8. 1 2 Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010). The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer . Simon & Schuster. ISBN   978-1-4391-0795-9. OCLC   464593321.
  9. ↑ 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   0092-8674. PMID   10647931. S2CID   1478778.
  10. ↑ Hanahan, D.; Weinberg, R. A. (2011). "Hallmarks of Cancer: The Next Generation". Cell. 144 (5): 646–674. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2011.02.013 . PMID   21376230.
  11. ↑ Tabin, C. J.; Bradley, S. M.; Bargmann, C. I.; Weinberg, R. A.; Papageorge, A. G.; Scolnick, E. M.; Dhar, R.; Lowy, D. R.; Chang, E. H. (1982). "Mechanism of activation of a human oncogene". Nature. 300 (5888): 143–9. Bibcode:1982Natur.300..143T. doi:10.1038/300143a0. PMID   6290897. S2CID   4253259.
  12. ↑ Christine L. Chaffer; Robert A. Weinberg (March 25, 2011). "A perspective on Cancer Cell Metastasis". Science. 331 (6024): 1559–1564. Bibcode:2011Sci...331.1559C. doi:10.1126/science.1203543. PMID   21436443. S2CID   10550070.
  13. ↑ Robert Weinberg publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  14. ↑ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  15. ↑ "Albert Einstein World Award of Science 1999". Archived from the original on March 4, 2014. Retrieved August 13, 2013.
  16. ↑ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved July 15, 2021.
  17. ↑ "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Robert Weinberg". Archived from the original on April 3, 2019. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
  18. ↑ "2009 Honorees". hope-funds.org. January 2, 2009. Retrieved September 15, 2020.
  19. ↑ "LAUREATES 2013". Breakthrough Prize in Lifesciences. Archived from the original on December 19, 2013. Retrieved December 19, 2013.
  20. ↑ "The Japan Prize Foundation". The Japan Prize Foundation.
  21. ↑ "Papers from MIT Cancer Biologist's Laboratory Retracted". The Boston Globe . Archived from the original on July 29, 2015.
  22. ↑ "Three Retractions for Highly Cited Author". Archived from the original on May 23, 2015.
  23. ↑ "Cancer Research retraction is fifth for Robert Weinberg, fourth for his former student". July 6, 2015. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015.
  24. ↑ Weinberg, Robert A.; Richardson, Andrea L.; Brock, Jane E.; Wang, Zhigang C.; Szász, Attila M.; Calogrias, Diana; Benaich, Nathan; Reinhardt, Ferenc; Valastyan, Scott (June 12, 2009). "Retraction of Cell paper by Robert Weinberg". Cell. 137 (6): 1032–1046. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.03.047. PMC   2766609 . PMID   19524507.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.