Six UCSF faculty scientists are among 64 new members elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
The new UCSF members are:
• Allan Basbaum, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy
• Donna M. Ferriero, MD, professor of neurology and pediatrics and chief of the Division of Child Neurology
• Stanton Glantz, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education
• Warner Greene, MD, PhD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology
• Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, director of the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center and Cancer Research Institute
• Raymond L. White, professor of neurology and director of the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center
The election brings to 69 the number of UCSF faculty who are members of the prestigious institute. Election to the institute recognizes those who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care and public health. It is considered one of the highest honors in these fields.
Basbaum is widely recognized for his studies on the neurobiological basis of pain and its control. His research interests concern the transmission and control of nociceptive (pain-stimulating) messages and the molecular mechanisms that contribute to persistent pain in the setting of tissue or nerve injury. He and his colleagues have identified proteins on the surface of many sensory nerves that trigger the nerves to fire pain signals under certain conditions.
Ferriero's laboratory has been critical in defining the role of oxidative stress when newborns suffer from stroke or intracranial hemorrhage, and in defining the relationship of selectively vulnerable neural cells during maturation-dependent brain injury. She serves as director of the UCSF Neonatal Brain Disorders Laboratory, which brings together physicians and basic scientists to study the mechanisms of ischemic injury in the developing brain after a variety of insults.
Glantz is a leading scholar on the health hazards of smoking and secondhand smoke, and an advocate of restricting the promotion of smoking in the media. He is the author of three books and more than 150 scientific papers, including the first major review that identified involuntary smoking as a cause of heart disease and the landmark July 19, 1995, issue of JAMA on the Brown and Williamson documents, which showed that the tobacco industry knew 30 years ago nicotine was addictive and that smoking caused cancer.
Greene also serves as co-director of the UCSF Gladstone Center for AIDS Research. His research focuses on the pathogenic interplay of the HIV-1 and HTLV-1 human retroviruses with cells of the immune system and on the diseases that may result - AIDS and adult T-cell leukemia - respectively. The author of more than 300 scientific papers, he has been honored with outstanding investigator awards from the American Federation for Clinical Research and the American College of Rheumatology, among others.
McCormick holds the David A. Wood Endowed Chair in Tumor Biology and Cancer Research and also is a professor of microbiology and immunology. He is nationally recognized for studies on the molecular basis of cancer, and for developing new ways to treat cancer. In 1992 he founded Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Richmond, Calif., a biotechnology company that focuses on developing new cancer therapies. He continues to serve as a consultant to Onyx.
White, an internationally recognized human genetics researcher, is recognized for conceiving the use of natural genetic variations, or polymorphisms, to map disease genes and for demonstrating that tumors can form as a result of a two-step process: inheriting a defective copy of a gene and losing the normal copy. He discovered the genes that cause an inherited colon cancer and cause neurofibromatosis, a disease in which tumors form in the nervous system, skin and other organs. The UCSF-affiliated Gallo Center that he directs focuses on genetic, cellular and molecular approaches to study basic neuroscience and the effects of alcoholism on the brain.
UCSF is a leading university that consistently defines health care worldwide by conducting advanced biomedical research, educating graduate students in the life sciences and providing complex patient care.
Source: Wallace Ravven
