MD Anderson Events

Pediatrics Research Seminar Series: Signaling Protein and Drug Discovery using Pediatric Cancer Stem Cells

David Kaplan, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist, Cell Biology Program, and Co-head, SickKkids Comprehensive Cancer Centre Hospital for Sick Children Professor, Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto The Hospital for Sick Children MaRs Centre

Date: 12/8/09, 9am to 10am
Time: 12/8/09, 9am to 10am
Location: Smith Research Building, Conference SRB1.122
Format: Seminar/Conference
Facilitator: Vidya Gopalakrishnan, PhD
Speaker Bio: Dr. David Kaplan is a Senior Scientist and Co-Head of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, a Professor at the University of Toronto, and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cancer and Neuroscience. He has made several discoveries in the signal transduction field, including that of PI-3 kinase (Cell 1987), TrkA as the Nerve Growth Factor receptor (Nature 1991; Science 1991), SNT/FRS-2 (Molec. Cell. Biol. 1993), Akt as a kinase regulated by PI3-kinase (Cell 1995, Science 1997), and the p53 family members p63 and p73 as the major proteins regulating death, survival, and degeneration in the nervous system, and p73 as a gene involved in protecting the brain from Alzheimer’s disease (Science 2000; Neuron 2005, Neuron 2008). The Kaplan laboratory, joint with the lab of Freda Miller, has three research focuses: (1) identifying and characterizing the signal transduction pathways regulating the survival, growth, and regeneration of neurons and neural stem cells, (2) discovering the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases and mental retardation, and (3) identifying how neuroblastoma arises and metastasizes and developing novel treatments using stem cells from this cancer (Can. Res. 2007). Dr. Kaplan obtained his BA from Clark University in Massachusetts, his PhD from Harvard University with Dr. Thomas Roberts in 1987, and completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco in 1990. His first laboratory was at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland, and in 1996, moved to Canada where he founded the Brain Tumor Research Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University and held the William Feindel Chair in Neurooncology at McGill University. He is a member of the Canadian Stem Cell Network, where he leads a high throughput screening effort to identify new drugs to treat cancer using cancer stem cells, with an emphasis on neuroblastoma.
Contact: Samuel Riley - sriley@mdanderson.org
Attachments:
  Kaplan biography.doc (DOC, 72 KB)

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