Peter Reddien wins Rita Allen Scholars
award
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (August 21, 2006) — Whitehead
Member Peter
Reddien is one of three recipients of the 2006 Rita
Allen Foundation Scholars award. Reddien will receive
$50,000 a year for three years. In addition, he has
been chosen from among the awardees to be named the
Milton E. Cassel Scholar, an additional honor that includes
$5,000 extra per year.
“This is an honor,” says Reddien, “the
recognition and support of the Foundation for our work
will facilitate the ability to follow our curiosity
about how stem cells are regulated.”
The Foundation supports researchers studying either
cancer, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy. Reddien
was chosen for the relevance his work has to cancer.
Reddien’s lab focuses on the planarian flatworm,
a model organism whose astounding ability to regenerate
entire body parts has long fascinated scientists. In
fact, if you excise as little as 1/279th of the planarian’s
body, an entirely new flatworm can grow from that single
fragment. Roughly 10-30 percent of the planarian’s
cells are stem cells, and Reddien and his team are investigating
all of the molecular mechanisms that regulate these
cells.
“Stem cells are thought to lie at the heart of
a lot of cancers,” says Reddien. “In fact,
this represents a largely new view of tumor development.
Many tumor types are likely fueled not by the tumor
mass itself, but by a tiny population of cancer-specific
stem cells in the tumor. Chances are that these are
cells that have acquired stem cell-like activity or
stem cells that have lost some of their regulatory systems.”
In order to understand how stem cell regulation can
go bad, it is essential to understand all the mechanisms
that make these cells run efficiently in the first place.
The planarian flatworm turns out to be one of the most
efficient model organisms in which to analyze the process
of stem cell regulation. “I can look at the regulation
of the stem cells in the animals, as opposed to in a
dish,” says Reddien. “And that’s a
great advantage.”
In addition, planarian flatworms almost never get cancer—an
aspect of their biology that is counter-intuitive. If
an organism is susceptible to cancer every time a cell
divides, and if planarian stem cells are constantly
dividing, then these animals should be getting cancer
at a higher rate than most other organisms for whom
stem cell division is less frequent. But they don’t.
“Clearly, these stem cells are highly regulated,”
says Reddien. “Understanding the basic science
of this regulation will translate to numerous areas,
including cancer.”
The Rita Allen Foundation was established in 1953. In
1969, a large proportion of the Allen estate was dedicated
to advancing medical research. Over the last 30 years,
the Foundation has supported more than 80 scientists.
Whitehead Founding Member Robert Weinberg was a Rita
Allen Foundation Scholar from 1976 to 1980, while an
associate professor at MIT.
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