Jeff Wrana | |
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Born | Scarborough, Ontario, Canada |
Awards | Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2005) |
Academic background | |
Education | BSc, 1984, PhD, Biochemistry, 1991, University of Toronto |
Thesis | Regulation of connective tissue cells by transforming growth factor-[beta] (1991) |
Academic work | |
Institutions |
Jeffrey L. Wrana is a Canadian cancer researcher. He is the CIBC Breast Cancer Research Scientist and Mary Janigan Research Chair in Molecular Cancer Therapeutic at Mount Sinai Hospital and University of Toronto (U of T). As a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical Genetics and Microbiology at U of T, Wrana was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Wrana is a native to Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. [1] He completed his Bachelor of Science degree at the University College, Toronto in 1984 [2] and his PhD in 1991 at the University of Toronto (U of T). [3] Following his PhD, Wrana completed his postdoctoral training at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 1990 to 1995. [4] As a postdoctoral fellow, he wrote a seminal paper explaining how one signalling rogue molecule in cancers could communicate with other cells. [1]
Following his postdoctoral fellowship, Wrana accepted a research position at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Working alongside Liliana Attisan, Wrana co-discovered that the mutation of the MADR2 gene was responsible for some forms of colon cancer. [5] Upon accepting a professorship position at his alma mater, Wrana began focusing on the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-) family of cell signalling proteins that regulate cell growth and function. In his laboratory, Wrana helped to define the components of the TGF-ß signalling pathway and determine how its receptors are internalized by cells. [6] Beyond U of T, Wrana also continued to work as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Research Scholar. [7] Wrana's efforts were recognized with the 2005 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. [6] He was also awarded a seven-year Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Medical Genetics and Microbiology at U of T. [8] In his first year as a CRC, Wrana was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada's Division of Life Sciences. [9]
In 2009, Wrana and colleague Ian Taylor developed Dynamic Network Modularity (Dynemo), a biological model that could help physicians predict whether a woman is more likely to survive and recover from breast cancer: [10] [11] [12] it achieved this by analysing how proteins and other components within cancer cells interact with each other in order to form networks, [10] [13] [14] and how alterations of these processes could have an impact on tumorigenesis, [15] as well as the usage of specific drugs in oncological therapies. [13] [15] His efforts were recognised with the Premier's 2010 Summit Award for Medical Research. [16] Wrana later collaborated with Andras Nagy at Mount Sinai Hospital on a new stem cell project. After Nagy discovered a new method to create pluripotent stem cells without disrupting healthy genes, their laboratories discovered ways to improve the efficiency of stem cell creation for use in tissue regeneration. [17] In a mouse model of breast cancer, Wrana's research team also found that expression of the Cd81 protein in cancer-associated fibroblasts induced exosomal trafficking of Wnt11 to cancer cells, promoting metastasis through induction of the core planar cell polarity pathway. [18]
In 2015, Wrana was appointed the inaugural CIBC Scientist in Breast Cancer Research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. [19] In this role, he began investigating how different cells contribute to gut development and maintenance. By 2018, Wrana and his postdoctoral fellow had co-discovered a new type of cell in the intestinal lining that they called the "revival stem cell". This new cell, which is only active for 24 hours, is responsible for creating new adult stem cells when the intestinal lining is damaged and functions to rebuild the intestinal lining. [20] [21] He was recognised with the 2018 McLaughlin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada for his "pivotal contributions to our understanding of biology, human diseases, and its treatment" and his leadership in the promotion of "Canadian science through collaborative research facilities and international impact." [22]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wrana used his laboratory and resources to assist in analysing thousands of COVID-19 tests across Ontario. In August 2020, his research team used the robotics platform to screen thousands of positive samples for variants by rapidly sequencing fingerprint regions of the viral genome to look for key mutations. [23] The following year, Wrana was a co-investigator in a project aimed at analysing 10,000 COVID-19 tests at once through C19-SPAR-Seq. [24]
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a cancer treatment and research institution in Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital. MSKCC is one of 52 National Cancer Institute–designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers. It had already been renamed and relocated, to its present site, when the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research was founded in 1945, and built adjacent to the hospital. The two medical entities formally coordinated their operations in 1960, and formally merged as a single entity in 1980. Its main campus is located at 1275 York Avenue between 67th and 68th Streets in Manhattan.
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The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, formerly the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is a private medical school in New York City, New York, United States. The school is the academic teaching arm of the Mount Sinai Health System, which manages eight hospital campuses in the New York metropolitan area, including Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
The Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute is a medical research institute in Toronto, Ontario and part of the Sinai Health System. It was originally established in 1985 as the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, the research arm of Mount Sinai Hospital, by an endowment from the Lunenfeld and Kunin families. It was renamed to the current name on June 24, 2013, after a $35 million donation from Larry and Judy Tanenbaum.
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.
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) is an independent, not-for-profit organization which has raised $569.4 million to support clinical and translational research on breast cancer at medical institutions in the United States and abroad. BCRF currently funds over 255 researchers in 14 countries.
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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.
Simon N. Powell is a British cancer researcher and radiation oncologist residing in New York City.
Kenneth Offit is an American cancer geneticist and oncologist. He is currently Chief of the Clinical Genetics Service and the Robert and Kate Niehaus Chair in Inherited Cancer Genomics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Offit is also a member of the Program in Cancer Biology and Genetics at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, Professor of Medicine and Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College, and a member of both the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute and the Evaluation of Genomic Applications in Practice and Prevention working group of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Carlos Cordon-Cardo 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.
Marcel R.M. van den Brink is a Dutch oncologist and researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center known for his research in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for cancer patients.
Jeffrey Victor Ravetch is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics and Immunology at The Rockefeller University.
Alexander Rudensky is an immunologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center known for his research on regulatory T cells and the transcription factor Foxp3.
Viviane Tabar is an American neurosurgeon, the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York since 2017.
Elisa Rush Port FACS is Associate Professor of Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as cofounder and director of the Dubin Breast Center at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Health System, since 2010. She has received four research grants, has served as an investigator or co-investigator on 15 clinical trials, published 44 peer-reviewed articles, and published a total of 12 book chapters and books. She has specialized in sentinel-node biopsy, a diagnostic method that determines cancer stages based on spread to regional lymph nodes, nipple sparing mastectomy, and the use of MRI for breast cancer.
Maria Jasin is a developmental biologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is known for studying homologous recombination, a method in which double-strand breaks in DNA strands are repaired, and for discovering the role of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in cancers.
Michel Sadelain is an genetic engineer and cell therapist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, where he holds the Steve and Barbara Friedman Chair. He is the founding director of the Center for Cell Engineering and the head of the Gene Transfer and Gene Expression Laboratory. He is a member of the department of medicine at Memorial Hospital and of the immunology program at the Sloan Kettering Institute. He is best known for his major contributions to T cell engineering and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy, an immunotherapy based on the genetic engineering of a patient's own T cells to treat cancer.