Carlos Cordon-Cardo | |
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| Born | February 25, 1957 Calella, Spain |
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Carlos Cordon-Cardo (born February 25, 1957) is a Spanish-born American physician and scientist known for his research in experimental pathology and molecular oncology. He holds the "Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given" Chair in Pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Cordon-Cardo was born in Calella, a seaside town in the Province of Barcelona and was determined to study medicine and pathology from his childhood days when he asked for a microscope for his 10th birthday. He enrolled in the Autonomous University of Barcelona medical school in 1975 and received his MD in 1980. With the encouragement of his mentor at the university and the assistance of a fellowship from the Spanish Government, he then went to Cornell University Medical College for graduate work in pathology, cell biology and genetics. [1] [2]
After earning his PhD from Cornell in 1985 with his dissertation Immunoanatomic Dissection of the Normal Human Adult Kidney and Urinary Tract, Cordon-Cardo became a research fellow in immunopathology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He worked there for over 20 years, creating the center's division of molecular pathology in 1995 and serving as its first director. In 2006, he joined the faculty of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons as Chernow Professor of Clinical Urological Sciences and Professor of Clinical Pathology and Cell Biology in the Institute for Cancer Genetics. He remained at Columbia until 2011 when he moved to Mount Sinai School of Medicine to become the "Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given" Professor of Pathology. [3]
Cordon-Cardo married Alicia Bouzan in 1990. A breast cancer survivor and active in a number of cancer charities, Alicia Bouzan-Cordon died in 2009 from a rare lung disease. [4] The couple had two children. Cordon-Cardo is himself a survivor of colon cancer to which he had a genetic predisposition. In an effort to overcome the stigma of cancer in his native Spain he wrote an article about his experiences for the Sunday magazine of the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia in 2006. In the article, for which he won an award from the Spanish Society of Oncology, he highlighted the resources available for cancer patients and "described his feelings of fear after the diagnosis, overcoming the dread, and the support from his wife, doctors, nurses, and friends" during his treatment in 2002–2003. [5]
In 2006 Cordon-Cardo was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and in 2012 received the Cornell Medical College Distinguished Alumni Award "in recognition of distinguished, lifelong contributions to biomedical research and education." [6] [7]
Considered one of the pioneers in oncologic molecular pathology and the mechanisms of tumor suppression, [1] [2] [5] Cordon-Cardo has authored or co-authored over 500 academic papers and numerous book chapters. He is on the Thomson ISI list of the top 250 researchers in Clinical Medicine and in 2013 was named to the list compiled by Stanford University and SciTech Strategies of the world's 400 most influential bio-medical scientists. [8] [9]
According to Dean F. Bajorin of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center:
He was the first investigator to identify genetically distinct pathways for superficial and muscle-invasive bladder cancers. The underpinnings for these pathways were based on over a decade of studies elucidating genetic perturbations seen in low and high-grade tumors. These pathways now serve as a template for modern studies. [10]
Several findings from Cordon-Cardo's research at Sloan Kettering have had specific implications for the treatment of cancer and experimental cancer treatment and have led to more personalized therapies, particularly for cancers of the genitourinary system. [1] While it had been previously thought that P-glycoprotein was unique to cancer cells, Cordon-Cardo showed in 1989 that it is also present in normal cells and is exploited by cancer cells to survive chemotherapy. In 1990, he was among the first to show that the mutated gene (RB) which causes the childhood cancer retinoblastoma is also present in some adults with sarcomas but no history of retinoblastoma. He also found that the presence of the mutated gene in adult cancers was associated with a poor clinical outcome. His 1994 research in collaboration with Arnold J. Levine was one of the first examples of how mutations in the gene which regulates the tumor suppressor p53 can lead to cancer by inactivating all the normal p53, thus allowing cancer cells to grow uncontrollably. A later study by Cordon-Cardo in 1997 found that when mutated p53 and RB are both present in a tumor, it becomes very aggressive and resistant to most treatments. [5]
Among Cordon-Cardo's most frequently cited scientific papers are:
His single-authored book chapters include:
2017 retraction. http://mcb.asm.org/content/37/18/e00365-17.short
P-glycoprotein 1 also known as multidrug resistance protein 1 (MDR1) or ATP-binding cassette sub-family B member 1 (ABCB1) or cluster of differentiation 243 (CD243) is an important protein of the cell membrane that pumps many foreign substances out of cells. More formally, it is an ATP-dependent efflux pump with broad substrate specificity. It exists in animals, fungi, and bacteria, and it likely evolved as a defense mechanism against harmful substances.
Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) describes a set of highly related glycoproteins involved in cell adhesion. CEA is normally produced in gastrointestinal tissue during fetal development, but the production stops before birth. Consequently, CEA is usually present at very low levels in the blood of healthy adults. However, the serum levels are raised in some types of cancer, which means that it can be used as a tumor marker in clinical tests. Serum levels can also be elevated in heavy smokers.
Zbtb7, originally named Pokemon, is a gene that may act as a master switch for cancer, and is responsible for the proliferation of cancer throughout surrounding cells. The leader of the research team which discovered this, geneticist Pier Paolo Pandolfi from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, said the gene is unique in that it is needed for other oncogenes to cause cancer. Discovery of the gene was first published in the January 2005 issue of Nature.
Rakesh K. Jain is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Harvard Medical School and Director of the E.L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Josep Baselga i Torres, known in Spanish as José Baselga was a Spanish medical oncologist and researcher focused on the development of novel molecular targeted agents, with a special emphasis in breast cancer. Through his career he was associated with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, and the Massachusetts General Hospital in their hematology and oncology divisions. He led the development of the breast cancer treatment Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody, that targets the HER2 protein which is impacted in aggressive breast cancers.
Proto-oncogene tyrosine-protein kinase ROS is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the ROS1 gene.
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