Robert Weinberg awarded Landon-AACR
Prize for Cancer Research
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 1, 2006) - Whitehead Founding
Member Robert
Weinberg has been named one of two recipients of
the 2006 Landon-AACR Prize for Cancer Research.
The prize, offered by the Kirk A. and Dorothy P. Landon
Foundation and the American Association for Cancer Research,
is the largest awarded to cancer researchers by a professional
society of their peers. Angela M. Hartley Brodie, professor
of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore,
is the second recipient of the Landon Prize.
Each winner will receive an unrestricted cash award
of $200,000. The two will present successive scientific
lectures at the AACR Annual Meeting, in Washington,
D.C., on April 3, 2006.
"Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined
that my work begun three decades ago would lead
to recognition of this sort," says Weinberg. |
“Cancer research has been a consuming passion
of my life for three decades, and so it comes as an
extraordinary honor that I am recognized in this way
by my peers who include, by all measures, the world
leaders in this dynamic and ever-fascinating field of
science,” says Weinberg. “I am extremely
flattered. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined
that my work begun three decades ago would lead to recognition
of this sort.”
Weinberg’s first major contributions
to cancer research were the discoveries of human oncogenes
(genes that cause cancer when mutated) and tumor suppressor
genes (genes that when mutated fail to suppress unchecked
cell growth).
His laboratory later built upon the previous discovery
of telomeres, specialized structures that define the
ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, the
DNA at each telomere gets shorter. The enzyme responsible
for maintaining telomere length, called telomerase,
occurs at low levels in normal human tissues. In tumor
cells, telomerase is more prevalent and more active,
giving cells a longer than normal life span.
The genes coding for telomerase proved to be essential
ingredients in the molecular cocktail which must be
altered within a cell before it is transformed from
the normal state to cancer. Once the Weinberg team learned
the identities of the genes critical to tumor formation,
they were able to effect the transformation in vitro.
The process took 15 years.
The Weinberg lab continues to study the molecular mechanisms
that control cell proliferation and the formation of
tumors. Additional work has shown that when the cells
in the thin layer of tissue which covers the mammary
glands (epithelial cells) are transformed into tumor
cells, they must recruit stromal cells (which occur
in nearby connective tissue) into their midst before
they can form carcinomas. Weinberg is investigating
how stromal cells are recruited. His lab has developed
an experimental system that models all the steps by
which breast cancer forms.
He is also studying the genetics of tumor metastasis,
and has recently begun to investigate how cancer stem
cells affect tumor development.
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