Brian Druker, Co-inventor, Gleevec
Brian Druker, Co-inventor, Gleevec
Brian Druker M.D., Director of the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute, JELD-WEN Chair of Leukemia Research, OHSU, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute After having trained in oncology at Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Druker then returned to the lab to begin his research career studying the regulation of the growth of cancer cells and the practical application to cancer therapies. His work was instrumental in the development of Gleevec, a drug that targets the molecular defect in chronic myeloid leukemia. After completing a series of preclinical studies, Dr. Druker spearheaded the highly successful clinical trials of imatinib for CML. Imatinib is currently FDA approved for CML and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. His role in the development of imatinib and its application in the clinic have resulted in numerous awards for Dr. Druker, including the John J. Kenney Award from The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the AACR-Richard, and many others.
George Church, Co-developer, Human Genome Project
George Church, Co-developer, Human Genome Project
George Church, Ph.D. Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard and MIT With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly-formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly-applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags,homologous recombination methods,and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing & software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994. He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005 and research on synthetic biology. He is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard, MIT & Washington University. He has been advisor to 22 companies, most recently co-founding (with Joseph Jacobson, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy) Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology and (with Chris Somerville) founding LS9, which is focused on biofuels. He is a senior editor for Nature EMBO Molecular Systems Biology.
Kary Banks Mullis, Nobel laureate & Inventor of PCR
Kary Banks Mullis, Nobel laureate & Inventor of PCR
He received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the UC Berkeley, after which Dr. Mullis became a postdoctoral fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Kansas Medical School. In 1977, he began two years of postdoctoral work in pharmaceutical chemistry at the UCSF. Dr. Mullis then joined the Cetus Corporation, where, for seven years, he conducted research on oligonucleotide synthesis and invented the polymerase chain reaction. Dr. Mullis received a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993, for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method of amplifying DNA which multiplies a single, microscopic strand of the genetic material billions of times within hours. Among his many other awards, Dr. Mullis was also awarded the Japan Prize in 1993 for the PCR invention and was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1998.
Philip R. Lee, Former Director of Health Services, USAID
Philip R. Lee, Former Director of Health Services, USAID
Dr. Philip R. Lee is Senior Scholar, Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and Professor Emeritus of Social Medicine, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been a member of the UCSF faculty since 1969. He retired in 1993 and resumed active Emeritus status in 1997. From July 1993 through January 1997, he served as Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Before going to Washington, Dr. Lee served as Director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies, which he founded with Lewis Butler, JD at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 1972. He served as chancellor of UCSF from 1969 to 1972. Prior to joining the UCSF faculty he was Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1965 to 1969, and was Director of Health Services in the Agency for International Development from 1963 to 1965. A native of San Francisco, Dr. Lee received his M.D. from Stanford in 1948 and an M.S. from the University of Minnesota in 1955. He is the author or co-author of 145 articles in the health field, and he has co-authored numerous books, including "Pills, Profits and Politics"; "Primary Care in a Specialized World"; "Exercise and Health"; "Pills and the Public Purse"; "Prescriptions for Death: the Drugging of the Third World"; "Drugs and the Elderly: Clinical, Social, and Policy Perspectives"; and "Bad Medicine". He has edited two books, one (The Nation's Health) is in its seventh edition. While at UCSF, his research and teaching endeavors in the field of health policy focused on physician payment, prescription drugs, reproductive health policy, health manpower and AIDS-related issues. His current research is focused on diversity in medical education, where the primary focus is a case study of Stanford and UCSF medical schools since 1960. He has just completed a study of Medicare and prescription drugs. Throughout his career he has served (officially and unofficially) as advisor and mentor for countless fellows and students who have gone on to important positions in government, academia and the private sector.
