Dr. Dennis Slamon
| Dennis J. Slamon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 6, 1948 New Castle, Pennsylvania |
| Alma mater |
Washington & Jefferson College (B.A.) University of Chicago (Ph.D. cell biology, M.D. (1975)) |
| Occupation | oncologist, professor |
| Awards |
Gairdner Foundation International Award (2007) Scheele Award (2009) |
Dennis Joseph Slamon (born August 8, 1948), is an American oncologist and chief of the division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA. He is best known for his work identifying the HER2/neu oncogene that is amplified in 25-33% of breast cancer patients and the resulting treatment Herceptin.
Slamon is the son of a West Virginia coal miner. He attended Washington & Jefferson College for its pre-med program.
He currently serves as director of Clinical/Translational Research at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and as director of the Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program at JCCC. He is a professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and executive vice chair for research for UCLA's Department of Medicine. Slamon also serves as director of the medical advisory board for the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, a fund-raising organization that promotes advances in colorectal cancer.
In 1986 Axel Ulirich, a german scientist working at Genentec, first discovered the Her-2 protein and gave a conference about it in which Slamon was present and afterwards Slamon proposed to work together, since he suspected that a mutation in Her-2 might cause cancer, eventually they found a kind of aggressive breast cancer with a mutation in the gen responsible for the Her-2 protein and started working on producing an antibody to block that protein, hoping to create a new breast cancer treatment, however Genentec had serious administrative conflicts regarding the direction of their research at the time and they refused to found their research, with Ullrich leaving the company. Despite not working at Genentec Slamon kept insisting, which lead to him being known and disliked among the staff, but eventually he convinced a group of Genentec scientistsand got funds to do a small study, which proved the efficacy of the Her-2 antibody in fighting breast cancer which convinced Genentec to launch a full scale research and development effort, which concluded in the creating of new more effective breast cancer treatments.
...
Wikipedia