George C. Prendergast

George C. Prendergast
Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Fields Oncology, Molecular biology, Oncoimmunology
Institutions Lankenau Institute for Medical Research
DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company
The Wistar Institute
Merck Research Laboratories
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Alma mater Princeton University (PhD)
Yale University (MS)
University of Pennsylvania (BA)
Notable awards 1995 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences

George C. Prendergast, PhD (born 1961) is an American oncologist and molecular biologist, currently president and CEO of Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR);[1] CEO of LIMR Development, Inc. and LIMR Chemical Genomics Center; co-leader of the Program in Cancer Cell Biology & Signaling at Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University;[2] and editor-in-chief of Cancer Research.[3][4]

Education and career

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1961, Prendergast graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 with a BA in Biochemistry. He earned an MS in molecular biophysics from Yale University in 1984 and a PhD in Molecular biology from Princeton University in 1989.After receiving his doctorate, Prendergast continued his research as an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at NYU Medical Center.

Prendergast joined the Department of Cancer Research at Merck Research Laboratories as a staff scientist in 1991. In 1993, he returned to academic research at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, first as an assistant professor and later as an associate professor and assistant chair of the Tumor Biology Group. While at Wistar, in 1995, Prendergast was designated a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences.[5]

In 1999, Prendergast left Wistar to become senior director of the Cancer Research Group at DuPont Pharmaceuticals Company. After the sale of DuPont Pharmaceuticals to Bristol-Myers Squibb, Prendergast moved his groups at Wistar and DuPont to Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) as a senior investigator in 2002. He was appointed president and CEO of LIMR in 2004,.

Accomplishments

Prendergast’s research has contributed to the discovery and study of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes in cancer, and more recently to understanding the role of the immune system in cancer progression and treatment. In the field of cancer genetics, his research helped define how genetic alterations lead to cancer development.

Prendergast presenting at 2013 CIMT cancer immunotherapy conference in Mainz, Germany

His more recent work has linked cancer genetics and cancer immunology in new ways and advanced the study of how cancer cells erect barriers against the immune system.[6] Through this work, he has developed an approach that works to degrade these barriers and stimulate the immune system in combination with chemotherapy.

He is the author of 150 peer-reviewed publications and 74 book chapters, editorials, and monographs. He has edited two books: Molecular Cancer Therapeutics: Strategies for Drug Discovery and Development (2004)[7] and the first and second editions of Cancer Immunotherapy: Immune Suppression and Tumor Growth (2007, 2013). He currently serves as editor-in-chief of Cancer Research, the most-cited journal in the field.[4]

His work has been cited over 12,000 times.[8] Prendergast holds 17 U.S. patents, with 7 patents pending.

Selected peer-reviewed publications (of 225 total)

Prendergast, G.C., and Ziff, E.B. (1991). “Methylation-sensitive sequence-specific DNA binding by the c-Myc basic region”. Science 250, 186-189. doi: 10.1126/science.1987636.

Prendergast, G.C., Lawe, D. and Ziff, E.B. (1991). "Association of Myn, the murine homolog of Max, with c-Myc stimulatesmethylation-sensitive DNA binding and Ras cotransformation". Cell 65, 395-407. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(91)90457-A

Sakamuro, D., Elliott, K., Wechsler-Reya, R., and Prendergast, G.C. (1996). "BIN1 is a novel MYC-interacting protein with features of a tumor suppressor". Nature Genetics 14, 69-77. doi: 10.1038/ng0996-69.

Ge, K., DuHadaway, J., Du, W., Herlyn, M., Rodeck, U., and Prendergast, G.C. (1999). "Mechanism for elimination of a tumor suppressor:aberrant splicing of a brain-specific exon causes loss of function of Bin1 inmelanoma". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96, 9689-9694.doi: 10.1073/pnas.96.17.9689.

Adini, I., Rabinovitz, I., Sun, J.F., Prendergast, G.C., and Benjamin, L.E. (2003). "RhoB controls Akt trafficking and stage-specific survival of endothelial cells during vascular development". Genes & Development 17, 2721-2732. doi: 10.1101/gad.1134603.

Prendergast, G.C. and Jaffee, E.M. (2007). "Cancer immunologists and cancer cell biologists: why we didn’t talk then but need to now". Cancer Research 67, 3500-3505. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-06-4626.

Prendergast, G.C. (2008). "Immune escape as a fundamental trait of cancer: focus on IDO". Oncogene 27, 3889-3900. doi: 10.1038/onc.2008.35.

Prendergast, G.C., Metz, R. and Muller, A.J. (2010). "Towards a genetic definition of ‘cancer-associated’ inflammation: role of the IDO pathway". American Journal of Pathology 176, 2082-2087. doi: 10.2353/ajpath.2010.091173.

Smith, C., Chang, M.-Y., Parker, K., Beury, D., DuHadaway, J., Flick, H., Boulden, J., Sutanto-Ward, E., Soler, A.P., Laury-Kleintop, L., Mandik-Nayak, L., Metz, R., Ostrand-Rosenberg, S., Prendergast, G.C. and Muller, A.J. (2012). "IDO is a nodal pathogenic driver of lung cancer development and metastasis". Cancer Discovery 2, 722-735. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-12-0014.

Prendergast, G.C. (2012). "Immunological thought in the mainstream of cancer research: past divorce, recent remarriage and elective affinities of the future". OncoImmunology 1, 793-797. doi: 10.4161/onci.20909.

Metz, R. and Prendergast, G.C. (2012). "A perspective on new immune adjuvant principles: reprogramming inflammatory states to permit clearance of cancer and other age-associated pathologies". OncoImmunology 1, 924-929. doi: 10.4161/onci.21358.

Metz, R., Rust, S., DuHadaway, J.B., Mautino, M.R., Munn, D.H., Vahanian, N.N., Link, C.J. and Prendergast, G.C. (2012). "IDO inhibits a tryptophan sufficiency signal needed to stimulate mTOR: a novel IDO effector pathway targeted by 1-methyl-D-tryptophan". OncoImmunology 1,1460-1468. doi: 10.4161/onci.21716.

Kazerounian, S., Gerald, D., Huang, M., Chin, Y.R., Udayakumar, D., Zheng, N., O’Donnell, R.K., Perruzzi, C., Mangiante, L.,Pourat, J., Phung, T.L., Bravo-Nuevo, A., Shechter, S., McNamara, S., DuHadaway, J., Kocher, O.N., Brown, L.F., Toker, A., Prendergast, G.C. and Benjamin, L.E. (2013). "RhoB differentially controls Akt function in tumor cells and stromal endothelial cells during breast tumorigenesis". Cancer Research 73, 50-61. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-3055.

Honors

1995 - American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award
1995 - Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences Award
2003 - Highlighted Project, 2003 DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program Report
2008 - Special Achievement Award, Chinese Society for Clinical Oncology
2008 - Designated One of the 250 Historically Most Influential Alumni of Princeton University[9]
2012 - Inventor of the Year, Thomas Jefferson University Kimmel Cancer Center

References

  1. ↑ "The Lankenau Institute for Medical Research - George C. Prendergast, PhD". Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  2. ↑ Program in Cancer Cell Biology & Signaling, Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University
  3. ↑ Cancer Research Editorial Board; Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research
  4. 1 2 "About Cancer Research - American Association for Cancer Research". Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  5. ↑ "Pew Scholars Directory - George C. Prendergast, Ph.D.". Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  6. ↑ Melissa Jacobs (22 March 2013). "Lankenau Institute for Medical Research's George Prendergast Investigates Immunotherapy, Pregnancy and Cancer". MainLine Today.
  7. ↑ "Search results for 'George Prendergast' > 'Book' > 'George C Prendergast'". OCLC WorldCat. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  8. ↑ "George C Prendergast - Google Scholar". Retrieved 29 December 2013.
  9. ↑ "Influential Princeton alumni". Princeton Alumni Weekly. January 23, 2008. Retrieved 29 December 2013.

External links

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