Charles J. Sherr

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Charles J. Sherr (* 1944 in New York City ) is an American cancer researcher . Since 1983 he has been working at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis , where he conducts research on the molecular and genetic level into the development of tumors , such as cyclin-dependent kinases and tumor suppressors . He is also an elected member of numerous specialist societies.

Career

Charles J. Sherr was born in 1944 in the Bronx , a borough of New York City, and moved with his parents to Long Island at the age of ten , where he attended Oyster Bay High School until 1962 . He then enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio , which he left in 1966 with a Bachelor of Arts . There followed six years at New York University , where he studied medicine and at the same time did research on his doctorate . In 1972 he completed both and received the MD and Ph.D.

After Sherr had worked in the pathology department of Bellevue Hospital in New York for a year, it was clear to him that he would not practice as a doctor and instead would like to work in research. As a result, he moved to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the central institute for cancer research in the United States, as a post-doc , thus setting out on his future research direction for the first time. He spent ten years at NCI, during which time he made a name for himself in his field, so that in 1983 he moved to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis , Tennessee . At that time, St. Jude's was primarily known as a children's cancer center, but less as an institution for cancer research, which it would become in the following decades. Sherr is still doing research at St. Jude's, where he leads a research group with his wife and supervised a number of doctoral students and post-docs. He has also been with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1988 .

Research priorities

Sherr's scientific orientation was largely shaped by Harold Elliot Varmus ( Nobel Prize Winner 1989), whom he met in 1975 and who is one of the leading personalities in cancer research. As a result, Sherr concentrated increasingly on the molecular biological and genetic relationships in the development of cancer.

He described first that the gene "c-fms" for the CSF1 receptor encoded , in turn, of M-CSF is stimulated. In this context, he was able to show that “c-fms” is a proto-oncogene , so that mutations in this part of the genetic information lead to a “faulty” receptor and cancer can develop via the M-CSF. Sherr is also concerned with cyclin-dependent kinases , their influence on the cell cycle and their inhibitors , which in turn are involved in the regulation of tumor suppressors such as p53 and the retinoblastoma protein .

Sherr has been involved in over 230 scientific publications to date.

Honors

In 1994 Sherr was elected to the American Society for Microbiology , and a year later to the National Academy of Sciences . He has received the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award (2000) and the Charles S. Mott Prize (2004). He has been a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2010 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research since 2013 .

Personal

Sherr is married to the molecular biologist Martine F. Roussel , who is also active in cancer research at St. Jude's and with whom he leads a research group there. The couple has a son; Sherr also has two children from his first marriage.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Member Profiles - Charles Sherr. (PDF; 26 kB) In: ascb.org. American Society for Cell Biology, August 3, 2009, accessed July 27, 2019 .
  2. ^ A b Charles J. Sherr, MD, PhD. aacr.org, accessed on July 28, 2016 .
  3. ^ Charles J. Sherr, MD, PhD. hhmi.org, accessed on July 28, 2016 .