Richard H. Scheller | |
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Born | |
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin–Madison, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University |
Known for | Head of gRED |
Awards | NAS Award in Molecular Biology (1997) Kavli Prize (2010) Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2013) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Neuroscience |
Institutions | Genentech, University of California San Francisco |
Doctoral advisor | Eric H. Davidson |
Other academic advisors | Eric Kandel, Richard Axel |
Richard H. Scheller (born 30 October 1953) is the former chief science officer and head of therapeutics at 23andMe and the former executive vice president of research and early development at Genentech. [1] He was a professor at Stanford University from 1982 to 2001 before joining Genentech. He has been awarded the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1989, the W. Alden Spencer Award in 1993 and the NAS Award in Molecular Biology in 1997, won the 2010 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience with Thomas C. Südhof and James E. Rothman, and won the 2013 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research with Thomas Südhof. He was also given the Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award from University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He earned his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under the guidance of Eric H. Davidson. [2] While a graduate student, he worked with Keiichi Itakura and Arthur Riggs to help synthesize Somatostatin for Herb Boyer at Genentech. [3] After finishing his graduate studies, he did a brief postdoc with Davidson and later with Eric Kandel and Richard Axel at Columbia University. [1] While at Columbia, he extended his previous work with recombinant DNA to identify the egg-laying hormone (ELH) gene family of neuropeptides. [4]
Scheller joined the Stanford University faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences in 1982 and later the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. He was an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1990 to 2001. [5] While at Stanford, he cloned and identified the proteins that control neurotransmitter release notably those in the Syntaxin family of transport proteins, Rab GTPases, and SNAREs. [6]
In 2001, he was recruited from Stanford to join Genentech as a senior vice president and chief research officer, replacing Dennis Henner. [7] In 2008, was named the chief scientific officer and executive vice president of research. After the acquisition of Genentech by Hoffmann-La Roche, he was appointed the head of Genentech research and early development and a member of the enlarged Roche Corporate Executive Committee. [8] He is concurrently an adjunct professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California San Francisco.
In March 2015, Scheller joined 23andMe as the chief scientific officer and head of therapeutics, creating and leading their therapeutics team, which translates genetic data into discovery and development of new drug therapies. [9]
Scheller is also known as an expert and enthusiastic collector of traditional and historical African art, since the 1980s. An article about his passion for African art appeared in Tribal Arts Magazine, [10] and some of his extensive collection was exhibited and published with the 2015 show entitled "Embodiments" at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
He is married to Susan McConnell, a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, and lives on Stanford Campus.
Günter Blobel was a Silesian German and American biologist and 1999 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell.
Herbert Wayne "Herb" Boyer is an American biotechnologist, researcher and entrepreneur in biotechnology. Along with Stanley N. Cohen and Paul Berg, he discovered a method to coax bacteria into producing foreign proteins, which aided in jump-starting the field of genetic engineering.
Aaron Ciechanover is an Israeli biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for characterizing the method that cells use to degrade and recycle proteins using ubiquitin.
Joseph Leonard Goldstein ForMemRS is an American biochemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1985, along with fellow University of Texas Southwestern researcher, Michael Brown, for their studies regarding cholesterol. They discovered that human cells have low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors that remove cholesterol from the blood and that when LDL receptors are not present in sufficient numbers, individuals develop hypercholesterolemia and become at risk for cholesterol related diseases, notably coronary heart disease. Their studies led to the development of statin drugs.
James Edward Rothman is an American biochemist. He is the Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Yale University, the Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology at Yale School of Medicine, and the Director of the Nanobiology Institute at the Yale West Campus. Rothman also concurrently serves as adjunct professor of physiology and cellular biophysics at Columbia University and a research professor at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London.
Arthur D. Levinson is an American businessman and is the chairman of Apple Inc. (2011–present) and chief executive officer (CEO) of Calico. He is the former CEO (1995–2009) and chairman (1999–2014) of Genentech.
Synaptosomal-Associated Protein, 25kDa (SNAP-25) is a Target Soluble NSF (N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor) Attachment Protein Receptor (t-SNARE) protein encoded by the SNAP25 gene found on chromosome 20p12.2 in humans. SNAP-25 is a component of the trans-SNARE complex, which accounts for membrane fusion specificity and directly executes fusion by forming a tight complex that brings the synaptic vesicle and plasma membranes together.
Emil "Tom" Frei III was an American physician and oncologist. He was the former director and former physician-in-chief of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also the Richard and Susan Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Carla J. Shatz is an American neurobiologist and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.
Syntaxin-1A is a protein that in humans is encoded by the STX1A gene.
Syntaxin-binding protein 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the STXBP1 gene. This gene encodes a syntaxin-binding protein. The encoded protein appears to play a role in release of neurotransmitters via regulation of syntaxin, a transmembrane attachment protein receptor. Mutations in this gene have been associated with neurological disorders including epilepsy, intellectual disability, and movement disorders.
Napoleone Ferrara is an Italian-American molecular biologist who joined University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center in 2013 after a career in Northern California at the biotechnology giant Genentech, where he pioneered the development of new treatments for angiogenic diseases such as cancer, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and diabetic retinopathy. At Genentech, he discovered VEGF—and made the first anti-VEGF antibody—which suppresses growth of a variety of tumors. These findings helped lead to development of the first clinically available angiogenesis inhibitor, bevacizumab (Avastin), which prevents the growth of new blood vessels into a solid tumor and which has become part of standard treatment for a variety of cancers. Ferrara's work led also to the development of ranibizumab (Lucentis), a drug that is highly effective at preventing vision loss in intraocular neovascular disorders.
Syntaxins are a family of membrane integrated Q-SNARE proteins participating in exocytosis.
Munc-18 proteins are the mammalian homologue of UNC-18 and are a member of the Sec1/Munc18-like (SM) protein family. Munc-18 proteins have been identified as essential components of the synaptic vesicle fusion protein complex and are crucial for the regulated exocytosis of neurons and neuroendocrine cells.
Thomas Christian Südhof, ForMemRS, is a German-American biochemist known for his study of synaptic transmission. Currently, he is a professor in the school of medicine in the department of molecular and cellular physiology, and by courtesy in neurology, and in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.
Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne is a Canadian-American neuroscientist who was the eleventh president of Stanford University.
Robert C. Malenka is a Nancy Friend Pritzker Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is also the director of the Nancy Friend Pritzker Laboratory in the Stanford Medical Center. He is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Malenka's laboratory research with the National Alzheimer's Foundation has informed researchers aiming to find a neuronal basis for Alzheimer's disease. Malenka's main career is focused on studying the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity and the effects of neural circuits on learning and memory.
Susan McConnell is a neurobiologist who studies the development of neural circuits in the mammalian cerebral cortex. She is a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, where she is the Susan B. Ford Professor of Humanities and Sciences, a Bass University Fellow, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
William G. Kaelin Jr. is an American Nobel laureate physician-scientist. He is a professor of medicine at Harvard University and the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. His laboratory studies tumor suppressor proteins. In 2016, Kaelin received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the AACR Princess Takamatsu Award. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2019 along with Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.