Stuart Orkin

Last updated
Stuart H. Orkin
Born (1946-04-23) April 23, 1946 (age 77)
Nationality American
Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School
Scientific career
Fields Pediatric oncology
Institutions Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center

Stuart Holland Orkin is an American physician, stem cell biologist and researcher in pediatric hematology-oncology. He is the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Orkin's research has focused on the genetic basis of blood disorders. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Contents

Early life

Orkin grew up in Manhattan, where his father was a urologist. [1] He studied biology as an undergraduate (B.S., 1967) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1972. He did postdoctoral research in molecular biology at the National Institutes of Health under geneticist Philip Leder. While Orkin was completing his training in hematology-oncology, his department chair, David G. Nathan, allowed him to establish his own research laboratory. [2]

Career

Orkin is the David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He served as Chair of the Department of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center from 2000–2016. [3] He has been on the Harvard Medical School faculty since the late 1970s and has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator since 1986. [4] [5]

In the 1970s and 1980s, Orkin conducted research that identified genetic mutations associated with a group of blood disorders known as the thalassemias. [6] This work led to the first comprehensive description of molecular defects in an inherited disorder. Later (1986), he and his team cloned a gene causing chronic granulomatous disease, marking the first time that a disease-causing gene was cloned without the researchers already knowing the protein coded by the gene. [6] Today, his research lab examines transcriptional regulators of cell specification and differentiation. [7] His laboratory cloned the first hematopoietic transcription factor GATA1 (1989). Starting in 2008, Orkin and his colleagues published a series of papers identifying the critical role for BCL11A in the developmental switch from fetal type (HbF) to adult type (HbA) hemoglobin. His group demonstrated that loss of BCL11A alone is sufficient to rescue the phenotype of sickle cell disease (SCD). In September 2015, Orkin published a study in the journal Nature showing a small section of DNA which could be responsive to gene therapy for sickle-cell disease. [8] Translation of the basic findings on the role of BCL11A in HbF silencing to the clinic is ongoing both with gene therapy and therapeutic gene editing.

Honors and awards

In 1987, Orkin received the E. Mead Johnson Award. [9] Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991, Orkin won the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal from that organization in 2013. [10] He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1992. [11] In 1993, he received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize. [12] The American Society of Hematology named Orkin one of its Legends in Hematology in 2008. [13] The American Society of Human Genetics honored Orkin with the 2014 William Allan Award, which recognizes sustained and significant contributions to human genetics. [6] In 2017, he was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, [14] and in 2018 he received the George M. Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians and the Mechthild Esser Nemmers Prize in Medical Science from Northwestern University. In 2020 he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine. [15] and the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine. In 2021, he received the Gruber Foundation Prize in Genetics. In 2022 he was a recipient of the Canada Gairdner International Award. Orkin was selected as the third recipient of the Elaine Redding Brinster Prize in Science or Medicine.

Personal

Orkin has been married for more than 50 years and has one daughter. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. Donnall Thomas</span> American hematologist

Edward Donnall "Don" Thomas was an American physician, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, and director emeritus of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In 1990 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Joseph E. Murray for the development of cell and organ transplantation. Thomas and his wife and research partner Dottie Thomas developed bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for leukemia.

Yuet Wai Kan, is a Chinese-American geneticist and hematologist. He is the current Louis K. Diamond Chair in Hematology and a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He is a former president of the American Society of Hematology.

Nancy C. Andrews NAS is an American biologist and physician noted for her research on iron homeostasis. Andrews was formerly Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sickle cell disease</span> Group of genetic blood disorders

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of blood disorders typically inherited. The most common type is known as sickle cell anaemia. It results in an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein haemoglobin found in red blood cells. This leads to a rigid, sickle-like shape under certain circumstances. Problems in sickle cell disease typically begin around 5 to 6 months of age. A number of health problems may develop, such as attacks of pain, anemia, swelling in the hands and feet, bacterial infections, and stroke. Long-term pain may develop as people get older. The average life expectancy in the developed world is 40 to 60 years.

David Gordon Nathan is a pediatrician and hematologist. He is known for his authorship of Nathan and Oski's Hematology of Infancy and Childhood, a standard reference in pediatrics, currently in its seventh edition. Nathan remains an author on the current edition. Now retired, he was Robert A. Stranahan professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and served as president of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute. He was born in Boston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Shurin</span>

Susan Shurin is a senior adviser at the National Cancer Institute. From 2006–2014, she served as Deputy and Acting Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) [NHLBI.nih.gov] at the National Institutes of Health [nih.gov] (NIH).

Timothy J. Ley

Timothy J. Ley is an American hematologist and cancer biologist. He is the Lewis T. and Rosalind B. Apple Professor of Oncology in the department of medicine, and is chief of the section of stem cell biology in the division of oncology at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a member of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Q. Daley</span>

George Quentin Daley is the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. He was formerly the Robert A. Stranahan Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Boston Children's Hospital, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Associate Director of Children's Stem Cell Program, a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He is a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2007–2008).

Leonard I. Zon, M.D., is the Grousbeck Professor of Pediatric Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Director of the Stem Cell Program, Children’s Hospital Boston.

Alan D. D'Andrea is an American cancer researcher and the Fuller American Cancer Society Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School. D'Andrea's research at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute focuses on chromosome instability and cancer susceptibility. He is currently the director of the Center for DNA Damage and Repair and the director of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Griffin P. Rodgers</span> American hematologist

Griffin P. Rodgers is the director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, one of the 27 institutes that make up the United States National Institutes of Health. He is also the Chief of the institute's Molecular and Clinical Hematology Branch and is known for contributions to research and therapy for sickle cell anemia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swee Lay Thein</span> Malaysian haematologist

Swee Lay Thein is a Malaysian haematologist and physician-scientist who is Senior Investigator at the National Institutes of Health. She works on the pathophysiology of haemoglobin disorders including sickle cell disease and thalassemia.

James R. Downing is an American clinical executive. He is the president and chief executive officer of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Scott Allen Armstrong is an American pediatric oncologist and cancer biologist focused on chromatin-based control of gene expression in cancer and therapeutic discovery. Armstrong and his team were the first to isolate rare leukemia stem cells in a mouse model of leukemia.

Benjamin Levine Ebert is the Chair of Medical Oncology at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and the George P. Canellos, MD and Jean S. Canellos Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Haig H. Kazazian, Jr. was a professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Kazazian was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Courtney Fitzhugh</span>

Courtney D. Fitzhugh is an American hematologist-oncologist and scientist. She is a clinical researcher and head of the laboratory of early sickle cell mortality prevention at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Roland Boyd Scott was an American researcher, pediatrician and authority on sickle cell disease. Scott authored a key paper in 1948 describing the incidence of sickle cell in infants that eventually led to the establishment of routine screening for newborns. He established the Howard University Center for Sickle Cell Disease. He was chairman of the pediatrics department at Howard University. He lobbied Congress to pass the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1971. He authored over 250 academic publications on allergy, growth and development, and sickle cell disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kwaku Ohene-Frempong</span> Ghanaian physician (1946–2022)

Kwaku Ohene-Frempong was a Ghanaian pediatric hematologist-oncologist and an expert in sickle cell disease (SCD). Ohene-Frempong grew up in Ghana and was a standout athlete in track-and-field, later competing for Yale University as well as Ghana at the 1970 British Commonwealth Games. He continued his medical training in the United States, where he completed medical school, pediatrics residency and a pediatric hematology-oncology fellowship. With a professional interest in SCD, Ohene-Frempong was a physician and involved in public health initiatives at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, and later the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in Pennsylvania. He continued professional relationships with Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, Ghana where he later became a full-time physician after retiring from CHOP. In Ghana, he established public health initiatives for SCD screening in newborns, as well as an SCD clinic for patients with the disease.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Panepinto</span>

Julie Ann Panepinto is an American pediatric hematologist-oncologist and physician-scientist. She specializes in health outcomes research and sickle cell disease. Panepinto became the acting director of the division of blood diseases and resources at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 2022. She was a professor of pediatrics and hematology at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

References

  1. ↑ "Lazarus A. Orkin, Physician, 81". New York Times. July 26, 1991.
  2. 1 2 Kazazian, Haig (March 2015). "2014 William Allan Award Introduction: Stuart Orkin". American Journal of Human Genetics . 96 (3): 352–353. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.11.018. PMC   4375625 . PMID   25748350.
  3. ↑ "Stuart H. Orkin, MD". Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Stuart Orkin, MD". Harvard Stem Cell Institute . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Stuart H. Orkin, MD". Howard Hughes Medical Institute . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 "ASHG honors Stuart H. Orkin with William Allan Award". American Society of Human Genetics. June 26, 2014. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  7. ↑ "BBS Faculty Member – Stuart Orkin". Harvard Medical School . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  8. ↑ Goldberg, Carey (September 21, 2015). "In step toward genetic fix, scientists pinpoint 'Achilles heel' of sickle cell disease". WBUR-FM . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  9. ↑ "E. Mead Johnson Award in Pediatric Research". American Pediatric Society . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Stuart H. Orkin". National Academy of Sciences . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  11. ↑ "IOM Member- Stuart H. Orkin, M.D." Institute of Medicine . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  12. ↑ "1993 Recipient: Stuart H. Orkin". Warren Alpert Foundation . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Legends in Hematology". American Society of Hematology . Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  14. ↑ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-02-08.
  15. ↑ International King Faisal Prize 2020
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.