Rita Allen Foundation Scholar Dr. Robert Allan Weinberg is once again the focus of a New York Times article on the evolution of cancer research.
In a piece appearing in its August 16, 2011 edition, the Times cites the seminal paper co-written by Dr. Weinberg and Dr. Douglas Hanahan, “The Hallmarks of Cancer,” as the game-defining foundation for much of the promising research that has taken place over the past ten years.
The Hallmarks of Cancer outlines the six requirements for one renegade cell to cause deadly cancer. It is an important document because advances in genetics by the end of the 20th Century had led to the discovery of over 100 cancer cells with bewildering diversity. Until Dr. Weinberg’s work brought better clarity to the field, it was difficult to identify the principles that cancers had in common.
Further research since publication of Hallmarks has demonstrated that cancer cells are even more aggressive than originally suspected.
Dr. Weinberg is the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is best known for his groundbreaking discoveries of the first human oncogene Ras and the first tumor supressor gene Rb.
He has been universally recognized for both his brilliance in cancer research and for his mentorship of many eminent scientists. He is currently studying cancer cell metastasis.
You can read the New York Times’ article, “Cancer’s Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus,” and Dr. Weinberg’s insightful comments here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/health/16cancer.html