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¡¡ The CBBSM
is directed by Bert L. Vallee, who is the Edgar M. Bronfman
Senior Distinguished Professor, assisted by an Executive Committee, consisting of
University Professor S. James Adelstein, Professor James F. Riordan, Deputy Director,
Assistant Professor Wolfgang Maret, and Assistant Professor Guo-Fu Hu. Dr. Thayer C. French is Director of Laboratories. An administrative staff is under the direction of
Ms. Rosemarie Meuse, Department Administrator. The
scientific functions of the CBBSM are supervised by a team of nine senior investigators
who constitute in the aggregate some 182 years of experience in the Center. All are involved in teaching or other duties of a
similar kind in addition to their day-to-day responsibility for research. They represent a broad range of scientific
expertise and have gained international recognition for their numerous contributions. They also serve as a major resource for the Center
by participating in its daily meetings and providing training and direction for the many
research fellows and students that they oversee. ·
Dr.
James F. Riordan, Professor of Biochemistry in the CBBSM. After receiving a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Fordham
University, Dr. Riordan joined the laboratory in September, 1961, as a research fellow
supported by the National Foundation and the NIH. He
was appointed to the HMS faculty 35 years ago in 1965 as an Associate in Biological
Chemistry and was later promoted to Assistant and then Associate Professor in that
department before receiving his present appointment in 1987. Initially trained in enzymology and protein
chemistry, he developed an interest in the metallobiochemistry of zinc enzymes while
pursuing novel chemical approaches to the mechanism of enzyme action. For more than 20 years he has studied the
structure/function relationships of angiotensin converting enzyme, and simultaneously
devoted increasing effort to elucidation of the biological activity of angiogenin, his
current major interest. From 1965-95, Dr.
Riordan was responsible for directing the Clinical Chemistry Laboratory of the Peter Bent
Brigham/Brigham and Women¡¯s Hospital. He has served continuously on numerous review
committees for the NIH starting in 1969, chairing both the Metallobiochemistry and SBIR
Special Emphasis study sections. He has had
extensive editorial experience including being Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Inorganic
Biochemistry for almost 20 years. He
currently is on the board of the European Journal of Biochemistry and is Associate Editor
of Biochemistry. His teaching experience,
which began when he was a graduate student, ranges from courses and lectures on proteins
and enzymes for both graduate and medical students to being a tutor for Harvard
undergraduates and, for the last eleven years, for first-year HMS students. He has been a consultant for several chemical and
biotechnology companies and is a member of the board and treasurer of the Endowment for
Research in Human Biology. ·
Dr.
David S. Auld, Associate Professor of Pathology. Dr. Auld obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from
Cornell in 1966 and came to HMS as a research fellow sponsored by the American Cancer
Society and the NIH. He became a member of
the faculty of the Department of Biological Chemistry, HMS, in 1969 and moved to his
current appointment
in 1983. He was originally trained in
bioorganic chemistry and kinetics and, subsequently, developed an interest in the role of
zinc in zinc metalloproteases and the identification of intermediates in enzyme catalysis. His areas of expertise include synthetic organic
chemistry, peptide synthesis, rapid kinetics, XAFS analysis, protein purification and
expression, all of which are being used to study the mechanism of action of matrix
metalloproteases. He pioneered in the
analysis of zinc binding sites in proteins and proposed the present standard
classification system for such sites. Long a
member of the board of biochemical tutors in the Department of Molecular and Cellular
Biology, he has supervised many undergraduate honor theses in addition to teaching in
graduate courses at HMS. He is much in demand
as a reviewer and is on the editorial board of Biochemistry and Archives of Biochemistry
and Biophysics. ·
Dr. Kenneth H. Falchuk, Associate Professor of Medicine. Dr. Falchuk became associated with the laboratory
in 1971 after serving as Chief Resident Physician at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and
has been a member of the Department of Medicine since that time. His major research interests have long been
centered on the role of zinc in developmental biology and more recently on the role of
retinoids in cellular differentiation. He
established the biochemical basis for growth arrest induced by zinc deficiency in
eukaryotes and has defined the distribution of zinc during amphibian development. His current research has identified the major
lipid that is used by X. laevis embryos for organogenesis and is investigating its
potential as a terminal differentiation agent for cancer therapy. In addition to his research activities, Dr.
Falchuk has major teaching, clinical and administrative responsibilities in the Department
of Medicine at Brigham & Women¡¯s Hospital where he is
Director of the Principal Medicine Clerkship and Chair of the Education Council. Dr. Falchuk is on the Vice Chair Advisory Board
for the Department of Medicine, Chair of the Education Committee of the Brigham and Women¡¯s Hospital and the Co-Chair of the Education Committee of the Partners Health
Care System. He is also a member of the HST
faculty, and is on the Advisory Committee of the Pan-American Federation of Association of
Medical Schools. ·
Dr.
Robert
Shapiro, Associate Professor of Pathology.
Dr. Shapiro joined the CBBSM in 1980 as a graduate student in the
Department of Biological Chemistry, HMS. He
received his Ph.D. in 1984, and became a faculty member in the Department of
Pathology in 1991. Since 1996, he
has also held an appointment as Visiting Professor in the School of Biology and
Biochemistry, University of Bath, U.K. From his doctoral training in the kinetics and mechanism of
zinc metalloenzymes, Dr. Shapiro has extended his research interests to the
structure and function of angiogenin and other ribonucleases, and the
interactions of these proteins with human ribonuclease inhibitor.
He has long-standing collaborations with structural biologists to explore
the catalytic mechanism of angiogenin as well as to assist in the computer-aided
design of angiogenin inhibitors. He
also directs the laboratory's atomic absorption spectrometry facility, which
performs trace metal analysis for the general scientific community, and has
collaborated on many joint projects in this area. ·
Dr.
James W. Fett, Associate Professor of Pathology. Dr. Fett obtained his Ph.D. in Physiological
Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974.
His work there on immunoglobulin structure led him to the Medical University of
South Carolina and the Department of Immunology and Microbiology. He moved to the CBBSM in 1978 as Assistant
Professor of Pathology and was made an Associate Professor in 1987. His work on angiogenesis led to the discovery of
angiogenin and subsequently to the development of anti-angiogenin monoclonal antibodies. Together with Dr. Karen Olson, he has established
animal models for testing the efficacy of these antibodies and a number of other
anti-angiogenin agents in preventing tumor growth and metastases. He has industrial and governmental collaborations,
and his research is sponsored by the Department of the Army. ·
Dr.
Karen A. Olson, Instructor in Pathology. Dr. Olson received a Ph.D. in Immunology from the
State University of New York at Buffalo in 1981. After
a research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, she joined the laboratory in
1984. She has been instrumental in the
development of numerous animal systems and statistical models for determining the efficacy
of anti-angiogenin molecules for the treatment of cancer.
She has also developed immunological assays for angiogenin and shown that it is an
acute phase protein. She plays a major role
in the training of students and research assistants and has administrative
responsibilities important to the maintenance of the laboratory. ·
Dr.
Wolfgang Maret, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry. Dr. Maret received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the
University of the Saarland in Germany in 1980. He
came to HMS in 1986 to investigate the structure and function of alcohol denydrogenase and
other metalloenzymes. He has a broad
background in spectroscopic and kinetic techniques as well as expertise in protein
isolation and characterization. His principal
research interests at present are the molecular mechanisms of cellular zinc distribution
and the mechanisms of metal ion incorporation in metalloproteins. This work centers on metallothionein which Dr.
Maret has postulated serves as the key regulator of the free zinc concentration in the
cell. ·
Dr.
Guo-fu Hu, Assistant Professor in the CBBSM. Dr. Hu received a Ph.D. from the Shanghai
Institute of Biochemistry in 1988 and after a fellowship at the Tsukuba Life Science
Center in Japan he joined the CBBSM in 1990 as a research fellow. He was appointed Instructor in 1993. In 1997 he was given a non-resident professorship
at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry. Originally
trained in enzymology, Dr. Hu is currently interested in endothelial cell biology and the
mechanism of action of angiogenin, in particular, the identification of the angiogenin
receptor. In addition, Dr. Hu has developed
sensitive methods for the analysis of glycoproteins and has been studying the relationship
between serum glycoproteins and alcohol consumption.
He recently discovered that the antibiotic neomycin inhibits the nuclear
localization of angiogenin and is now testing the effect of this compound on tumor growth
in athymic mice. ·
Dr.
Wing Ming Keung, Visiting Assistant Professor in the CBBSM. Dr. Keung received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from
Colorado State University in 1979 and joined the CBBSM as a research fellow. In 1992, he was appointed Lecturer at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong where he worked on human liver alcohol dehydrogenase isozymes. In 1987 he returned to the CBBSM as a Visiting
Assistant Professor to pursue a project initiated in Hong Kong to identify the active
principle(s) in Chinese herbal medicines that have been used for centuries to treat
problems related to alcohol abuse. He
isolated one such compound, an isoflavone, from radix puerariae; demonstrated its capacity
to inhibit alcohol consumption in laboratory animals; and is currently investigating the
pharmacological basis for its mechanism of action. His
work has become widely known in the alcohol addiction field, he is a frequently invited
speaker and is an ad hoc member of an alcohol abuse study section of the NIH.
·
Dr. S. James
Adelstein, Daniel C. Tosteson University Professor and Professor of
Pathology, serves as senior consultant. In
1950, while a medical student at HMS, Dr. Adelstein worked in the MIT Spectroscopy
Laboratory under Dr. Vallee. During
1954-1957, he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation in the Biophysics Research Laboratory (see
Director¡¯s memoir). Following
his residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Dr. Adelstein established a radiation
biology laboratory at the then HMS Anatomy Department.
In 1968, he was called to the directorship of Nuclear Medicine at PBBH and,
subsequently, founded and still directs the school-wide Joint Program in Nuclear Medicine. In 1978, he entered the HMS Dean¡¯s Office as Dean for Academic Programs, remaining there until 1997. During this time, he kept in close touch with the
activities in the CBBSM. |