Ashani Weeraratna | |
---|---|
Born | Ashani Tanuja Weeraratna 1970or1971(age 51–53) |
Nationality | Sri Lankan |
Citizenship | United States |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | St. Mary's College of Maryland (B.A.) George Washington University (MPhil, Ph.D.) |
Thesis | Loss of Uteroglobin Expression in Metastatic Human Prostate Cancer (1998) |
Doctoral advisor | Steven Patierno |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Cancer research |
Sub-discipline | Melanoma metastasis |
Institutions | Wistar Institute University of the Sciences Johns Hopkins University |
Ashani Tanuja Weeraratna (born 1970or1971) [1] [2] is a Sri Lanka-born American cancer researcher whose findings are contributing to the scientific understanding of melanoma tumors. She is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of cancer biology and the E.V. McCollum Professor and Chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Weeraratna is a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board,which advises and assists the director of the National Cancer Institute on the activities of the national cancer program. [3]
She was head of the Weeraratna Lab at the Wistar Institute. At the Wistar Institute,Weeraratna was a full professor and co-program leader of the Immunology,Microenvironment,and Metastasis Program at the Wistar Institute and the program director of the cancer biology program at the University of the Sciences.
Weeraratna was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Lesotho. [4] From the age of 15,she wanted to become a cancer researcher. [2] In 1988,due to apartheid, [2] Weeraratna left Southern Africa at the age of 17 to study biology at St. Mary's College of Maryland. [1] She earned a bachelor's degree in 1991. Weeraratna obtained a Master's in Philosophy from George Washington University in 1997,during which time she met the Hand. She earned a doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Oncology from the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of the George Washington University Medical Center. Her 1998 dissertation was titled Loss of Uteroglobin Expression in Metastatic Human Prostate Cancer. Steven Patierno was her doctoral advisor. [5] From 1998 to 2000,Weeraratna completed post-graduate training and was a postdoctoral fellow in experimental therapeutics and pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center,then known as the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center. [6] From there,she went on to become a Staff Scientist in the laboratory of Jeff Trent,then Scientific Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute,at the National Institutes of Health. It was here that she followed up on the discovery by Dr Trent,and Dr. Michael Bittner,of the non-canonical Wnt signaling molecule,Wnt5A in melanoma. She spent the next decade or so of her career trying to understand the role of Wnt5A in melanoma metastasis.[ citation needed ]
In 2007,Weeraratna worked in the Laboratory of Immunology at the National Institute on Aging. [7] Weeraratna joined the Wistar Institute in 2011,first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor and program leader of the Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program at Wistar Institute. [1] In 2014,she was the recipient of an R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute. [8] In 2015,her research encompassed the effects of aging on skin and the corresponding changes in tumor growth. [9] She was named the Ira Brind associate professor,in 2016. [10] In receiving the professorship,Wistar Institute president and CEO,Dario Altieri remarked that "Dr. Weeraratna has demonstrated outstanding scientific initiative and is a great ambassador for our Institute...she is changing the way we understand melanoma,as she and her team seek ways to prevent and treat this dangerous disease. Under her leadership,we look forward to continued innovation and growth during these exciting times of research expansion at Wistar." [11] In 2018,Dr. Weeraratna is head of the Weeraratna Lab at the Wistar Institute. The lab researches molecular mechanisms related to melanoma metastasis,especially the Wnt signaling pathway. Weeraratna also investigates how changes to tumor microenvironment,especially aging,can change melanoma growth and the development of therapeutic resistance. [1]
In 2018,Weeraratna became a full professor and co-program leader of the Immunology,Microenvironment,and Metastasis Program at the Wistar Institute. [1] Until 2018,she was the program director of the Cancer Biology doctorate program at University of the Sciences. [12]
Weeraratna joined Johns Hopkins University in 2019 as a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of cancer biology. She will serve as the first female E.V. McCollum Professor and Chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). In this role,she will continue her melanoma research and expand the aging and cancer programs at JHSPH. Weeraratna holds a joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine department of oncology and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. [4] In 2020,Weeraratna will serve as president of the Society of Melanoma Research. [4]
In September 2021,President Joe Biden appointed Weeraratna as one of seven clinicians and researchers to the National Cancer Advisory Board,which advises the director of the National Cancer Institute on activities of the national cancer program. [3]
In June 2018,Weeraratna spoke at a Families Belong Together protest in Norristown,Pennsylvania. She revealed the difficulties she faced while emigrating without family to pursue the American Dream. Weeraratna spoke out against the Trump administration family separation policy,instead highlighting the scientific achievements and economic growth attributed to immigrants in the United States. She urged others to exercise their right to vote,stating that she was only recently able to do so because she is an immigrant. [2]
Books
Selected Articles
Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, then, are metastases (mets). It is generally distinguished from cancer invasion, which is the direct extension and penetration by cancer cells into neighboring tissues.
The Wistar Institute is an independent, nonprofit research institution in biomedical science with special focuses in oncology, immunology, infectious disease and vaccine research. Located on Spruce Street in Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood, Wistar was founded in 1892 as a nonprofit institution to focus on biomedical research and training. The Institute is a distinct entity from the University of Pennsylvania, but the two are frequent collaborators and share access to certain scientific research facilities.
Uveal melanoma is a type of eye cancer in the uvea of the eye. It is traditionally classed as originating in the iris, choroid, and ciliary body, but can also be divided into class I and class II. Symptoms include blurred vision, loss of vision or photopsia, but there may be no symptoms.
Protein Wnt-5a is a protein that in humans is encoded by the WNT5A gene.
A metastasis suppressor is a protein that acts to slow or prevent metastases from spreading in the body of an organism with cancer. Metastasis is one of the most lethal cancer processes. This process is responsible for about ninety percent of human cancer deaths. Proteins that act to slow or prevent metastases are different from those that act to suppress tumor growth. Genes for about a dozen such proteins are known in humans and other animals.
In medicine, desmoplasia is the growth of fibrous or connective tissue. It is also called a desmoplastic reaction to emphasize that it is secondary to an insult. Desmoplasia may occur around a neoplasm, causing dense fibrosis around the tumor, or scar tissue (adhesions) within the abdomen after abdominal surgery.
Bone metastasis, or osseous metastatic disease, is a category of cancer metastases that result from primary tumor invasions into bones. Bone-originating primary tumors such as osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, and Ewing sarcoma are rare; the most common bone tumor is a metastasis. Bone metastases can be classified as osteolytic, osteoblastic, or both. Unlike hematologic malignancies which originate in the blood and form non-solid tumors, bone metastases generally arise from epithelial tumors and form a solid mass inside the bone. Bone metastases, especially in a state of advanced disease, can cause severe pain, characterized by a dull, constant ache with periodic spikes of incident pain.
The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) was established in 1916, as the Department of Chemical Hygiene. That same year, the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health was founded, as it was named then. Today, the school is named the Bloomberg School of Public Health and is part of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
Joan Massagué, is a Spanish biologist and the current director of the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is also an internationally recognized leader in the study of both cancer metastasis and growth factors that regulate cell behavior, as well as a professor at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
Natalie G. Ahn is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of cell signaling, with a speciality in phosphorylation and cancers. Ahn's work uses the tools of "classical chemistry" to work on understanding the genetic code and how genetics affects life processes. She has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder since 2003, where she is a distinguished professor. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator between 1994 and 2014. In 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tasquinimod is an experimental drug currently being investigated for the treatment of solid tumors. Tasquinimod has been mostly studied in prostate cancer, but its mechanism of action suggests that it could be used to treat other cancers. Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), formerly called hormone-resistant or hormone-refractory prostate cancer, is prostate cancer that grows despite medical or surgical androgen deprivation therapy. Tasquinimod targets the tumor microenvironment and counteracts cancer development by inhibiting angiogenesis and metastasis and by modulating the immune system. It is now in phase III development, following successful phase II trial outcomes.
The tumor microenvironment (TME) is the environment around a tumor, including the surrounding blood vessels, immune cells, fibroblasts, signaling molecules and the extracellular matrix (ECM). The tumor and the surrounding microenvironment are closely related and interact constantly. Tumors can influence the microenvironment by releasing extracellular signals, promoting tumor angiogenesis and inducing peripheral immune tolerance, while the immune cells in the microenvironment can affect the growth and evolution of cancerous cells.
The Physical Sciences in Oncology Network (PS-ON) is a network of centers and projects set up by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) to link the physical sciences with the study of cancer. The program was launched in 2009 with Physical Sciences in Oncology Centers (PS-OCs) investigating complex and challenging questions in cancer research from a physical sciences perspective. To explore how the NCI could continue to support the integration of physical sciences and cancer research, a Think Tank and series of Strategic Workshops were held in 2012. These meetings served to update opportunities at the interface of physical sciences and cancer research and guided the development of the second phase including Physical Sciences in Oncology Projects (PS-OPs).
Meenhard Herlyn, D.V.M., D.Sc., is a researcher who works as director of The Wistar Institute Melanoma Research in Philadelphia. Herlyn obtained his D.V.M. degree from the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hanover, in 1970. Following that, in 1976, he earned a D.Sc. in medical microbiology from the University of Munich. In 1976, he joined The Wistar Institute as an associate scientist, focusing on the emerging field of monoclonal antibodies—a groundbreaking technology that now underlies a significant portion of targeted therapeutics. Transitioning to the role of assistant professor in 1981, Herlyn established a renowned laboratory dedicated to studying melanoma biology, which remains highly regarded in the field to this day. His primary research focus is the underlying biology behind melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer. Over the course of his career, he has been responsible for the use of three-dimensional artificial skin cultures to study tumor and normal cells, a clearer understanding of stem cells and how they relate to cancer, and signaling pathways related to cancer. The Wistar Melanoma (WM) cell lines that Herlyn has used and helped discover in his laboratory are responsible for a better understanding of the major steps of tumor progression in human cases of melanoma.
J. William Harbour is an American ophthalmologist, ocular oncologist and cancer researcher. He is Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He previously served as the vice chair and director of ocular oncology at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and associate director for basic science at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center of the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine.
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University is an NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore, MD. It was established in 1973 and received its NCI designation that same year as one of the first designated cancer centers in the country.
Kenneth J. Pienta is a medical doctor and the Donald S. Coffey professor of urology and professor of oncology and pharmacology and molecular sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He also serves as the director of research at the Brady Urological Institute.
Rosandra N. Kaplan is an American pediatric oncologist and scientist specialized in translational and clinical research on the mechanisms of cancer spread. She is a principal investigator and head of the tumor microenvironment and metastasis branch at the National Cancer Institute.
Xiaohong Rose Yang is an American biomedical scientist researching the genetics of dysplastic nevus syndrome and chordoma, and etiologic heterogeneity of breast cancer. She is a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Yang leads breast cancer studies in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.
Andrew Ewald is a professor of cell biology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is known for his contributions in the field of metastatic breast cancer research.
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