Dinah Singer | |
---|---|
![]() Singer in 2020 | |
Born | Dinah Schiffer 1948 (age 73–74) |
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Columbia University |
Spouse(s) | Alfred Singer |
Children | 2 |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | National Cancer Institute |
Dinah Schiffer Singer (born 1948) is an American immunologist specialized in the regulation of transcription in cancer, gene expression, and molecular immunology. She is the deputy director for scientific strategy and development at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Singer was previously director of the NCI division of cancer biology from 1999 to 2019.
Singer is the daughter of German-Jewish mathematician Menahem Max Schiffer. [1] She completed a B.S. in biology and life sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1969. [2] [3] Singer earned a Ph.D. in human genetics and biochemistry at Columbia University. Her 1975 dissertation was titled, Erythropoietic differentiation in murine erythroleukemia cells (Friend). [4] She was a postdoctoral fellow in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) laboratory of biochemistry. [2] [5]
Singer joined NCI in 1975. [3] She served as the director of the NCI Division of Cancer Biology (DCB) from 1999 to 2019, while simultaneously serving as senior investigator and chief of the molecular regulation section of the experimental immunology branch. In 2019, Singer was named NCI's deputy director for scientific strategy and development. [2] She oversees the NCI Center for Strategic Scientific Initiatives, Center for Research Strategy, Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, and Center for Cancer Training. [5]
In early 2020, as part of NCI’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she led the rapid creation of the Serological Sciences Network (SeroNet) to expand serological testing capacity and research to characterize the immune responses elicited by the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. Singer co-chaired the Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) of experts to develop the scientific direction of the Cancer MoonshotSM, a $1.8 billion initiative to accelerate cancer research. She continues to lead NCI's implementation of the Cancer Moonshot, which has resulted in 240 new research activities to address the BRP's recommendations. [5]
Singer's research interests are in the areas of regulation of transcription in cancer, gene expression and molecular immunology. Her research has provided insights into the molecular mechanisms that regulate MHC class I transcription in vivo. Some of her studies have identified BRD4, as a kinase that regulates early transcription, linking mitosis and transcription and TAF7 as a checkpoint regulator of early transcription. Singer's research program was focused on interrogating the regulatory networks governing transcription to generate an integrated understanding of the interplay between promoter elements and transcription complexes that establish appropriate regulation of gene expression across diverse cellular and tissue environments. [2]
Schiffer met her future husband, Alfred Singer, in their organic chemistry class at MIT in 1965. They have two sons. [3]
David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is currently President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he served as president from 1997 to 2006. He also served as the director of the Joint Center for Translational Medicine, which joined Caltech and UCLA in a program to translate basic scientific discoveries into clinical realities. He also formerly served as president of Rockefeller University from 1990 to 1991, founder and Director of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research from 1982 to 1990, and was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007.
Phillip Allen Sharp is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J. Roberts for "the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence". He has been selected to receive the 2015 Othmer Gold Medal.
The Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany is an interdisciplinary research institute that conducts basic research in modern immunobiology, developmental biology and epigenetics. It was founded in 1961 as the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and is one of 86 institutions of the Max Planck Society. Originally named the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, it was renamed to its current name in 2010 as it widened its research thrusts to the study of epigenetics.
Friend leukemia integration 1 transcription factor (FLI1), also known as transcription factor ERGB, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FLI1 gene, which is a proto-oncogene.
GATA3 is a transcription factor that in humans is encoded by the GATA3 gene. Studies in animal models and humans indicate that it controls the expression of a wide range of biologically and clinically important genes.
The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center is a cancer research and treatment center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of 52 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, its clinical base is the N.C. Cancer Hospital, part of the UNC Health Care system. UNC Lineberger is the only public NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center in the state of North Carolina. The current director is H. Shelton Earp III who succeeded current NCI director Norman Sharpless.
Margaret (“Peggy”) A. Goodell is an American scientist working in the field of stem cell research. Goodell is Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine, Director of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (STaR) Center, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She is best known for her discovery of a novel method to isolate adult stem cells.
Jennifer Lea Stow is deputy director (research), NHMRC Principal Research Fellow and head of the Protein Trafficking and Inflammation laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), The University of Queensland, Australia. She was awarded her PhD from Monash University in Melbourne in 1982. As a Fogarty International Fellow, she completed postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine (US) in the Department of Cell Biology. She was then appointed to her first faculty position as an assistant professor at Harvard University in the Renal Unit, Departments of Medicine and Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. At the end of 1994 she returned to Australia as a Wellcome Trust Senior International Medical Research fellow at The University of Queensland where her work has continued. Stow sits on national and international peer review and scientific committees and advisory boards. She has served as head of IMB's Division of Molecular Cell Biology, and in 2008 she was appointed as deputy director (research).
Keiko Ozato is a Japanese American geneticist whose research has focused on gene regulation in the developing immune system; She is best known for her contributions to immunogenetics and epigenetics in isolating the IRF8 transcription factor that aids humans in fighting off disease and for identifying the BRD4 protein that regulates cellular and viral genes that can invoke epigenetic memory. She is Senior Investigator at the Section on Molecular Genetics of Immunity at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Svend Peter Klinken is an Australian medical researcher and academic. He is currently the Chief Scientist of Western Australia. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the June 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Sir Richard Henry Treisman is a British scientist specialising in the molecular biology of cancer. Treisman is a director of research at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Ru-Chih Chow Huang is a Chinese-American biology professor at Johns Hopkins University. She is a biochemist who worked with James F. Bonner and Doug Fambrough to characterize and discern functions for nuclear histones in the early 1960s when the field lacked a consensus on types and functions of individual histone proteins. Later she made discoveries about the molecular biology of cancer and of viral gene regulation.
Meinrad Busslinger is a biochemist and immunologist, renown for his work on B cells. He is a Senior Scientist and Scientific Deputy Director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria.
Sónia Maria Campos Soares da Rocha, usually referred to as Professor Sónia Rocha, is a Portuguese cell biologist who holds a personal chair in biochemistry at the University of Liverpool, where she is the head of the Department of Biochemistry. Rocha runs an active multidisciplinary cell signaling research group studying hypoxia, and focused around transcription factors such as Hypoxia-inducible factors and NF-κB. Her laboratory is currently based in the Institute of Integrative Biology.
Anjana Rao, Ph.D., is a cellular and molecular biologist of Indian ethnicity, working in the US. She uses immune cells as well as other types of cells to understand intracellular signaling and gene expression. Her research focuses on how signaling pathways control gene expression.
Susan Marie Mackem is an American anatomic pathologist and physician-scientist. She researches vertebrate primary axis formation and the regulation of patterning and differentiation during limb development. She is a senior investigator and head of the regulation of vertebrate morphogenesis section at the National Cancer Institute's Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research. She is also an attending pathologist at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.
Karen E. Knudsen is Chief Executive Officer of American Cancer Society and its advocacy affiliate the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. She is the first woman to hold that position in either organization.
Joan Weliky Conaway is an American biochemist who researches gene transcription. She worked at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research from 2001 to 2021 and currently serves as Vice Provost and Dean for Basic Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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.
Ellen V. Rothenberg is an American biologist who is a Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
![]() | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dinah Singer . |