The Department of Genetics presents Robert A. Weinberg, Ph.D. as our 2008 Bernard Cohen Memorial Lecture in Genetics speaker. For more information regarding the lecture, please contact Kimberly Freeman by telephone (215-898-4916) or by email (freeman2@mail.med.upenn.edu).
Professor of Biology, Department of Biology, MIT
Director, Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, MIT
Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
"Mechanisms of Malignant Progression"
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
4:00 p.m.
Main Auditorium, Biomedical Research Building
Dr. Robert A. Weinberg is a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the first Director of the Ludwig Cancer Center at MIT. Moreover, he is an internationally recognized authority on the genetic basis of human cancer.
Dr. Weinberg and his colleagues isolated the first human cancer-causing gene, the ras oncogene, and the first known tumor suppressor gene, Rb, the retinoblastoma gene. The principal goal of his research program is determining how oncogenes, their normal counterparts (proto-oncogenes), and tumor suppressor genes fit together in the complex circuitry controlling cell growth. More recently, his group succeeded in creating the first genetically defined human cancer cells. He is particularly interested in applying this knowledge to improving the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.
Dr. Weinberg is the author or editor of six books and more than 350 articles. He has written a comprehensive cancer textbook entitled “The Biology of Cancer.” His other books, intended for a lay audience, are “One Renegade Cell,” "Racing to the Beginning of the Road: The Search for the Origin of Cancer" and "Genes and the Biology of Cancer," co-authored with Dr. Harold E. Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Weinberg is an elected Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Member of the American Philosophical Society and the Institute of Medicine.