Alan D'Andrea

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.

Alan D'Andrea
BornSeptember 28, 1956
Pasadena, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard University, Harvard Medical School
AwardsMember, National Academy of Medicine, 2017; Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2012; 52nd Annual AACR G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award, 2012.
Scientific career
FieldsCancer Research, Oncology, Hematology
InstitutionsHarvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute

As a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, D'Andrea cloned the erythropoietin receptor, a protein known to rescue red blood cell progenitors from apoptosis.[1]

Research

The D’Andrea laboratory at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute focuses on the molecular events involved in normal blood cell formation and on the molecular cause of leukemia and other cancers. His laboratory examines molecular signaling pathways and the resulting DNA damage response in mammalian cells. These pathways are often disrupted in cancer cells, accounting for chromosome instability and increased gene mutation frequency in human tumors. D'Andrea and his colleagues have identified and cloned a family of cytokine-inducible deubiquitinating enzymes that regulate hematopoietic cell growth by controlling the ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis of intracellular growth regulatory proteins.[2]

The practical application of D'Andrea's research includes genetic diseases in humans. His primary focus is the molecular pathogenesis of human chromosome instability syndromes: Fanconi anemia (FA), ataxia-telangiectasia (AT), and Bloom syndrome (BS). Most notably, Fanconi anemia is an autosomal-recessive cancer susceptibility disorder characterized by developmental defects and increased cellular sensitivity to DNA crosslinking agents.

Dr. D'Andrea's laboratory contributed significantly to the elucidation of a new DNA repair pathway, the FA/BRCA pathway, and demonstrated that one of the FA genes (FANCD1) is identical to the breast cancer gene, BRCA2.[3] Somatic disruption of genes in the FA/BRCA pathway account for the chromosome instability and drug sensitivity of many solid tumors in the general population including breast, ovarian, prostate, and pancreatic cancers.[4]

Background

D’Andrea received his MD in 1983 from Harvard Medical School, residency training in pediatric at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and fellowship training in hematology-oncology at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital Boston. He completed a research fellowship at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research and joined the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in 1990.

Awards
  • Lifetime Achievement Award, Fanconi Anemia Research Fund, 2019.
  • Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize, American Society of Hematology, 2018.[5]
  • Member, National Academy of Medicine, 2017.[6]
  • Co-leader, Stand Up To Cancer Dream Team for Ovarian Cancer, 2015.
  • 52nd Annual AACR G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award, 2012.[7]
  • Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2012.[8]
  • Brian P. O'Dell Memorial Research Award, LLS, 2009.
  • Elected Member, American Association of Physicians, 2003.
  • E. Mead Johnson Award for Research in Pediatrics, Society for Pediatric Research, 2001.
  • Excellence in Research Award, American Academy of Pediatrics, 1997.
  • Scholar Award, Leukemia Society of America, 1995.
  • Markey Scholar Award, 1990.

Personal

D'Andrea attended the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and Harvard University. He lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts with his wife and two dogs. He has two children. He is the brother of Laura Tyson, an American economist and former Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration.

References
  1. D'Andrea, A. D.; Lodish, H. F.; Wong, G. G. (1989-04-21). "Expression cloning of the murine erythropoietin receptor". Cell. 57 (2): 277–285. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(89)90965-3. ISSN 0092-8674. PMID 2539263.
  2. Zhu, Y; Carroll, M; Papa, F R; Hochstrasser, M; D'Andrea, A D (1996-04-16). "DUB-1, a deubiquitinating enzyme with growth-suppressing activity". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 93 (8): 3275–3279. doi:10.1073/pnas.93.8.3275. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 39596. PMID 8622927.
  3. Howlett, Niall G.; Taniguchi, Toshiyasu; Olson, Susan; Cox, Barbara; Waisfisz, Quinten; De Die-Smulders, Christine; Persky, Nicole; Grompe, Markus; Joenje, Hans; Pals, Gerard; Ikeda, Hideyuki (2002-07-26). "Biallelic inactivation of BRCA2 in Fanconi anemia". Science. 297 (5581): 606–609. doi:10.1126/science.1073834. ISSN 1095-9203. PMID 12065746.
  4. D'Andrea, Alan D. (2010-05-20). "Susceptibility pathways in Fanconi's anemia and breast cancer". The New England Journal of Medicine. 362 (20): 1909–1919. doi:10.1056/NEJMra0809889. ISSN 1533-4406. PMC 3069698. PMID 20484397.
  5. "Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize Recipients". www.hematology.org. 2019-08-29. Retrieved 2019-10-18.
  6. "National Academy of Medicine Elects 80 New Members".
  7. "Alan D. D'Andrea, M.D., Receives the 52nd Annual AACR G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award". Newswire.com. 2012-03-26. Retrieved September 4, 2012.
  8. "2012 AAAS Fellows" (PDF).
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