Don W. Cleveland
Don Whitefield Cleveland (born August 26, 1950 in Waynesville , Missouri ) is an American biochemist , cell and molecular biologist .
Don Cleveland received his bachelor's degree from New Mexico State University (where he was also a valedictorian in 1972) and received his PhD in biochemistry from Princeton University in 1977 . His dissertation was entitled Purification and properties of tau, a microtubule associated protein which induces assembly of microtubules from purified tubulin . In 1984 he became an Associate Professor and in 1988 Professor of Biological Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University . From 2000 he was Professor at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego .
Cleveland deals with mechanisms of mitosis and the mechanisms of chromosome arrangement during mitosis, genome rearrangement in cancer and neurodegenerative diseases (causes, especially in the cytoskeletal structures of neurons, and therapeutic approaches) such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Huntington's disease and Pick's disease (frontotemporal dementia, FTD). He found a cause of hereditary ALS in gene defects (mutations) in the gene for superoxide dismutase . This led to new approaches to therapy ( gene silencing , stem cell therapy ).
He identified the tau protein , which plays an important role in the assembly of the microtubule cell skeleton and plays a central role in various neurodegenerative diseases ( Alzheimer's disease , chronic traumatic brain injuries, for example in football players, the so-called dementia pugilistica ). According to Cleveland, this is also the first example in mammals of a control of gene expression post-transcriptionally via the control of RNA instabilities. In the event of illness, the protein is incorrectly folded, accumulates and slows down the spread of the defective protein in the nervous system. Cleveland itself developed a DNA silencing therapy for neurodegenerative diseases ( DNA Designer Drugs , short single-stranded DNA tailored to the defective gene and its RNA transcription) and demonstrated its effectiveness in a mouse model for more than three months. Clinical tests for a congenital form of ALS began in 2010 and for myotonic dystrophy in 2013. Others have followed for Huntington 's disease (where antisense oligonucleotide therapy is in clinical trials) and other forms of ALS, as well as Pick's disease and it will develop into one Researched extension to other neurodegenerative diseases (2017), including Parkinson's disease .
Cleveland is also researching gene therapy for neurodegenerative diseases with AAV and therapies with CRISPR RNA techniques. He investigated the possible role of aneuploidy in the development of cancer in the mouse model (breeding lines of mice with high aneuploidy) and found that aneuploidy promotes cancer with certain additional genetic disposition, in other cases (if other carcinogenic mechanisms independently produce aneuploidy) ) but suppressed.
He discovered the centromere component CENP-E, researched its function in the chromosome arrangement in the spindle in mitosis and meiosis (although he also found that the structure is determined epigenetically and how this is exactly done) and discovered that its inhibition stops mitosis and leads to cell death. This provided approaches for new chemotherapeutic agents against cancer (in the clinical test by GlaxoSmithKline and Cytokinetics).
For 2018 he received the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for elucidating the molecular pathology of a form of ALS and developing a therapy (in an animal model) .
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009), the American Academy of Microbiology (2006) and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. In 2013 he was President of the American Society for Cell Biology .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Date of birth and career data according to Pamela Kalte u. a. American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
- ^ Huntingtons Disease News, February 2016
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cleveland, Don W. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Cleveland, Don Whitefield (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American biochemist, cell and molecular biologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 26, 1950 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Waynesville , Missouri , United States |