Clifford Tabin

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Cliff Tabin
Professor Clifford Tabin ForMemRS.jpg
Cliff Tabin in 2014, portrait via the Royal Society
Born
Clifford James Tabin

(1954-01-19) January 19, 1954 (age 71)
Glencoe, Illinois
Education
Known for Sonic hedgehog [1]
Parent Julius Tabin
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Activation of the c-Ha-ras Oncogene  (1984)
Doctoral advisor Robert Weinberg
Website

Clifford James Tabin (born 1954) [8] is chairman of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. [9] [10]

Contents

Education

Tabin was educated at the University of Chicago where he was awarded a BS in physics in 1976. [9] He went on to graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded a PhD in 1984 for work on the regulation of gene expression in the Ras subfamily of oncogenes supervised by Robert Weinberg based in the MIT Department of Biology. [11] In Weinberg's lab, Tabin constructed murine leukemia virus, [12] the first recombinant retrovirus that could be used as a eukaryotic vector. [10]

Career

Following his PhD, Tabin did postdoctoral research with Douglas A. Melton at Harvard University, then moved to Massachusetts General Hospital where he worked on the molecular biology of limb development. He was appointed to the faculty in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School in 1989, and promoted to full professor in 1997 and chairman of the department in January 2007. [13] [14]

Entrepreneurial activities

In 2023, Dr. Cliff Tabin co-founded Somite Therapeutics, a biotechnology company that integrates artificial intelligence with stem cell biology to develop novel cell replacement therapies. Serving as a scientific co-founder, Tabin collaborates with other prominent scientists, including Olivier Pourquié, Allon Klein, and Jay Shendure, to advance the company's mission of producing human tissue for therapeutic applications using AI-driven models. Somite's flagship program, SMT-M01, targets Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and has received both Orphan Drug and Rare Pediatric Disease designations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company has also partnered with OmniaBio Inc., a cell and gene therapy contract development and manufacturing organization, to support the development and manufacturing of its cell therapy products. [15]

Research

As of 2014 Tabin's research [16] [17] [18] investigates the genetic regulation of vertebrate development, [19] [20] [21] combining classical methods of experimental embryology with modern molecular and genetic techniques for regulating gene expression during embryogenesis. [22] [23] [24]

Previously Tabin has worked on retroviruses, homeobox genes, oncogenes, developmental biology and evolution. Early in his research he investigated limb regeneration in the salamander, and described the expression of retinoic acid receptor and Hox genes in the blastema. Comparative studies by Ann Burke [25] [26] in his lab showed that differences in boundaries of Hox gene expression correlated with differences in skeletal morphology. [6] [27] [28] [29] The Tabin laboratory adjoins the laboratory of Connie Cepko. [30]

Awards and honors

Tabin was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2014. His nomination reads:

Tabin has made fundamental discoveries on embryonic development and evolution. A critical turning point in the history of developmental biology was the identification of the first known secreted morphogen, Sonic hedgehog. He clarified how morphogens like Shh orchestrate formation of the embryo, elucidating why the heart is located on the left and not the right side of the body and explaining why the thumb is different from the little finger. This provided critical insight into the origins of human congenital malformations. He has also solved important evolutionary riddles including the causes of variations in beak shape in Darwin's finches. [2]

Tabin has also been awarded the Edwin Conklin Medal in 2012, [3] the March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology jointly with Philip A. Beachy in 2008 [4] and the NAS Award in Molecular Biology in 1999. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2007 [5] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

Personal life

Tabin is the son of Julius Tabin, [9] [10] [31] a nuclear physicist who worked with Enrico Fermi on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II. [32] [33] [34] He has a brother, Geoff Tabin, and two children. Tabin appears as himself in a BBC Horizon programme titled Hopeful Monsters. [35]

References

  1. ↑ Riddle, R. D.; Johnson, R. L.; Laufer, E.; Tabin, C. (1993). "Sonic hedgehog mediates the polarizing activity of the ZPA". Cell. 75 (7): 1401–16. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(93)90626-2. PMID   8269518. S2CID   4973500.
  2. 1 2 "Professor Clifford Tabin ForMemRS". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on May 2, 2014.
  3. 1 2 Clifford Tabin Awarded Conklin Medal, Society for Developmental Biology
  4. 1 2 Anon (2008). "An Interview With... Cliff Tabin". Nature Reviews Genetics. 9 (6): 420. doi:10.1038/nrg2863. PMID   18504824. S2CID   45619315.
  5. 1 2 "Clifford J. Tabin, Harvard University". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on October 14, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Patrick Goymer (April 2006). "Milestone 17: (1979) First human oncogene: An important difference" . Nature Reviews Cancer. 6. Nature: S18. doi:10.1038/nrc1859.
  7. ↑ Marigo, V.; Davey, R. A.; Zuo, Y.; Cunningham, J. M.; Tabin, C. J. (1996). "Biochemical evidence that Patched is the Hedgehog receptor". Nature. 384 (6605): 176–9. Bibcode:1996Natur.384..176M. doi:10.1038/384176a0. hdl: 11380/455509 . PMID   8906794. S2CID   4325188.
  8. ↑ Cliff Tabin Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine , Harvard Medical School
  9. 1 2 3 Mossman, K. (2009). "Profile of Clifford Tabin". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (21): 8407–8409. Bibcode:2009PNAS..106.8407M. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903946106 . PMC   2688980 . PMID   19458049.
  10. 1 2 3 Tabin, C (2009). "Molecular tools, classic questions - an interview with Clifford Tabin. Interviewed by Richardson, Michael K". The International Journal of Developmental Biology. 53 (5–6): 725–31. doi: 10.1387/ijdb.072575mr . PMID   19557679.
  11. ↑ Tabin, Clifford James (1984). Activation of the c-Ha-ras Oncogene (PhD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OCLC   13089293.
  12. ↑ Goff, S. P.; Tabin, C. J.; Wang, J. Y.; Weinberg, R; Baltimore, D (1982). "Transfection of fibroblasts by cloned Abelson murine leukemia virus DNA and recovery of transmissible virus by recombination with helper virus". Journal of Virology. 41 (1): 271–85. doi:10.1128/JVI.41.1.271-285.1982. PMC   256749 . PMID   6283119.
  13. ↑ Cliff Tabin molbio seminar, Princeton University
  14. ↑ Harfe, B. D.; McManus, M. T.; Mansfield, J. H.; Hornstein, E.; Tabin, C. J. (2005). "The RNaseIII enzyme Dicer is required for morphogenesis but not patterning of the vertebrate limb". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 102 (31): 10898–903. Bibcode:2005PNAS..10210898H. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0504834102 . PMC   1182454 . PMID   16040801.
  15. ↑ "Somite Therapeutics and OmniaBio Inc. Announce Collaboration to Advance Somite's Cell Therapy Flagship Program". PR Newswire. September 9, 2024. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  16. ↑ Clifford Tabin's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  17. ↑ Clifford Tabin publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
  18. ↑ Clifford Tabin publications, Google Scholar
  19. ↑ Parada, L. F.; Tabin, C. J.; Shih, C.; Weinberg, R. A. (1982). "Human EJ bladder carcinoma oncogene is homologue of Harvey sarcoma virus ras gene". Nature. 297 (5866): 474–8. Bibcode:1982Natur.297..474P. doi:10.1038/297474a0. PMID   6283357. S2CID   4338225.
  20. ↑ Marigo, V.; Davey, R. A.; Zuo, Y.; Cunningham, J. M.; Tabin, C. J. (1996). "Biochemical evidence that Patched is the Hedgehog receptor". Nature. 384 (6605): 176–9. Bibcode:1996Natur.384..176M. doi:10.1038/384176a0. hdl: 11380/455509 . PMID   8906794. S2CID   4325188.
  21. ↑ McMahon, A. P.; Ingham, P. W.; Tabin, C. J. (2003). "1 Developmental roles and clinical significance of Hedgehog signaling". Current Topics in Developmental Biology. 53: 1–114. doi:10.1016/S0070-2153(03)53002-2. ISBN   9780121531539. PMID   12509125.
  22. ↑ Tabin, C. J. (1991). "Retinoids, homeoboxes, and growth factors: Toward molecular models for limb development". Cell. 66 (2): 199–217. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(91)90612-3. PMID   1677315. S2CID   5269260.
  23. ↑ Johnson, R. L.; Tabin, C. J. (1997). "Molecular models for vertebrate limb development". Cell. 90 (6): 979–90. doi: 10.1016/s0092-8674(00)80364-5 . PMID   9323126. S2CID   16213729.
  24. ↑ Vortkamp, A.; Lee, K.; Lanske, B.; Segre, G. V.; Kronenberg, H. M.; Tabin, C. J. (1996). "Regulation of Rate of Cartilage Differentiation by Indian Hedgehog and PTH-Related Protein". Science. 273 (5275): 613–22. Bibcode:1996Sci...273..613V. doi:10.1126/science.273.5275.613. PMID   8662546. S2CID   27737023.
  25. ↑ Burke, A. C.; Nelson, C. E.; Morgan, B. A.; Tabin, C (1995). "Hox genes and the evolution of vertebrate axial morphology". Development. 121 (2): 333–46. doi:10.1242/dev.121.2.333. PMID   7768176.
  26. ↑ Burke, A. C.; Tabin, C. J. (1996). "Virally mediated misexpression of Hoxc-6 in the cervical mesoderm results in spinal nerve truncations". Developmental Biology. 178 (1): 192–7. doi: 10.1006/dbio.1996.0210 . PMID   8812121.
  27. ↑ Morgan, B. A.; Tabin, C. J. (1993). "The role of homeobox genes in limb development". Current Opinion in Genetics & Development. 3 (4): 668–74. doi:10.1016/0959-437x(93)90105-x. PMID   7902151.
  28. ↑ Tabin, C. J. (2006). "The Key to Left-Right Asymmetry". Cell. 127 (1): 27–32. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.09.018 . PMID   17018270. S2CID   1775936.
  29. ↑ Logan, M; Pagán-Westphal, S. M.; Smith, D. M.; Paganessi, L; Tabin, C. J. (1998). "The transcription factor Pitx2 mediates situs-specific morphogenesis in response to left-right asymmetric signals". Cell. 94 (3): 307–17. doi: 10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81474-9 . PMID   9708733. S2CID   14375165.
  30. ↑ Profile of Constance L. Cepko, Ph.D, BioTechniques Vol. 36, No. 5, 2004-05-05, p. 737
  31. ↑ Julius Tabin Obituary (1919-2012) Physicist helped develop atom bomb, Chicago Tribune, 2012-09-02
  32. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20250525105323/https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/profile/julius-tabin/
  33. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20250430130628/https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/julius-tabins-interview/
  34. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20250819142250/https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/121119.html
  35. ↑ Clifford Tabin at IMDb
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