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Dr. Antonio Giordano is Director, Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine; Director, Center of Biotechnology, Temple University’s College of Science and Technology; and President and Chairman of the Board, Sbarro Health Research Organization.

In 1993, Dr. Giordano founded the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine with the generous help of Mario Sbarro, president of Sbarro, Inc., an internationally successful restaurant chain. In 2002, the Institute forged an exciting alliance with Temple University, forming the Sbarro Health Research Organization.

At the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at Temple University, promising researchers from around the globe pursue groundbreaking research in the molecular workings of cancer and other devastating diseases. The agreement with Temple was renewed in 2005, with the addition of two new research programs in molecular therapeutics and the study of the connections between obesity and cancer.

Dr. Giordano has been an internationally recognized researcher specializing in the genetics of cancer and gene therapy for 20 years. He has published 270 papers on his work in the fields of cell cycles, gene therapy and the genetics of cancer, and serves on the editorial boards of a number of professional journals.

In our 3-8-07 conversatin, Dr. Giordano discusses

• His important discoveries, Rb2/p130, Cyclin A, and Cdk9 and Cdk10, and their role in the battle against cancer
• The strong commitment at the Sbarro Institute to mentor young researchers
• Research activities at the University of Siena in Italy
• New developments in cancer research

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Dr. Zach Hall was the first President of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). CIRM funds stem cell research at research institutions and companies throughout California. The organization was established in 2004 with the passage of Proposition 71, which provided $3 billion in funding. Our grants support research with embryonic, adult and reprogrammed (iPS) stem cells, all with the goal of bringing new medical therapies to the people of California and the world.

Previously, Dr. Hall was Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Development at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Dr. Hall is the author and editor of An Introduction to Molecular Neurobiology, a widely used textbook, and has published more than 100 original papers and reviews in scientific journals.

In our 1/4/2006 interview, Dr. Hall discusses

• Timing for availability of therapies based on stem cell research
• The relationship between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning
• CIRM accomplishments in its first year of existence (2005)

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Dr. Michael Liebman

The stratified approach includes mining masses of patient data to deliver actionable items, relating both to risk profiling and optimal testing. The whole person is emphasized, including genetics and co-morbidities, as well as the home and work environments. The result moves from statistical analysis to causal analysis, and treats disease states as a process.

Dr. Liebman is President and Managing Director of Strategic Medicine, Inc. Previously, he was Executive Director of the Windber Research Institute and Director of Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center.

Dr. Liebman serves on 12 international scientific advisory boards and is an Invited Professor at the Shanghai Center for Bioinformatics Technology.

Technorati Tags: cancer, chronic disease, genetics, pharmacogenomics

Dr. Andrew Fire is the co-discoverer of RNA interference. He is the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and Professor, Departments of Pathology and Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Fire’s lab studies the mechanisms by which cells and organisms respond to genetic change.

The genetic landscape faced by a living cell is constantly changing. Developmental transitions, environmental shifts, and pathogenic invasions lend a dynamic character to both the genome and its activity pattern. The Fire Lab studies a variety of natural mechanisms that are utilized by cells adapting to genetic change.

These include mechanisms activated during normal development and systems for detecting and responding to foreign or unwanted genetic activity. At the root of these studies are questions of how a cell can distinguish “self” versus “nonself” and “wanted” versus “unwanted” gene expression.

The Fire Lab primarily makes use of the nematode C. elegans in experimental studies. C. elegans is small, easily cultured, and can readily be made to accept foreign DNA or RNA. The results of such experiments have outlined a number of concerted responses that recognize (and in most cases work to silence) the foreign nucleic acid. One such mechanism (RNAi) responds to double-stranded character in RNA: either as introduced experimentally into the organism or as produced from foreign DNA that has not undergone selection to avoid a dsRNA response.

Much of the current effort in the lab is directed toward a molecular understanding of the RNAi machinery and its roles in the cell. RNAi is not the only cellular defense against unwanted nucleic acid, and substantial current effort in the lab is also directed at identification of other triggers and mechanisms used in recognition and response to foreign information.

In our wide-ranging SCIENCE AND SOCIETY interview, done on 1-10-07, Dr. Fire discusses

• Process of discovery of RNA interference
• How can cellular machinery recognize certain informational molecules as ‘unwanted’
• How can the cell use this recognition to effectively silence malicious genetic activity
• RNA interference vs. “traditional” immunity
• Physiological factors modulating RNA interference to allow maximal response to pathogen RNAs
• Mechanisms by which cells and organisms respond to genetic change
• New frontiers in RNAi and its potential medical applications
• Potential future implications for RNA interference
• What advances from the field as a whole in the last couple of years are likely to revolutionize biology and medicine

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine, medicine, RNA_interference

Dr. Francis Barany is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Program of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at Cornell/Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. Dr. Barany is also Director of Mutation Research at the Strang Cancer Prevention Center. He is program director of two multi-center NCI and NIAID grants to develop new methods of cancer and infectious disease detection.

Dr. Barany is best known for developing the ligase chain reaction and ligase detection reaction, and Universal DNA arrays for detection of genetic diseases and cancer-associated mutations. He was named to the “SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 50″ in 2004.

In our in-depth 7-12-07 interview, Dr. Barany discusses

• How to detect cancer while it’s hidden in the genome
• Comprehensive molecular profiling of colon tumors
• The universal array genomic chip which is used for the rapid and accurate detection of cancers and other diseases, especially breast and colon cancer
• How the ligase chain reaction detects single-base mutations
• Grand challenges in cancer therapy

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine

Dr. Charis Eng is Chair and Founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Genetics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Dr. Eng’s research interests may be broadly characterized as clinical cancer genetics translational research. Her work on RET testing in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 and the characterization of the widening clinical spectra of PTEN gene mutations have been acknowledged as the paradigm for the practice of clinical cancer genetics.

Dr. Eng has published over 230 peer-reviewed original papers in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature.

In our wide-ranging SCIENCE AND SOCIETY interview, done on 8-9-07, Dr. Eng discusses

• What is genomic medicine?
• Personalized genetic risk assessment
• Genetic counseling
• Genetic testing and genetic screening

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine