Irving Weissman
Irving L. Weissman ( born October 21, 1939 in Great Falls, Montana) is an American physician, immunologist, cancer researchers and stem cell pioneer.
Life
Weissman grew up in Montana. He made first in 1961 his Bachelor of Science at Montana State College, in 1965 he received his doctorate in medicine at Stanford University, where he teaches and conducts research since then. Officially, he has been a professor at the Department of Pathology, Medical Faculty, but is also a professor of immunology, developmental biology, cancer research, and ( honorary ) Neurosurgery. He currently directs the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and also supports cancer research center he founded to conduct research on cancer stem cells.
Weissman has for decades been a world renowned immunologist and has many decades ago helped develop classical molecular and cell biological methods. His lab also developed new methods to isolate around 1988 successful hematopoietic stem cells from the mouse and later in humans. In addition, he also maintains a small marine laboratory in which the developmental biology and genetics of a simple colony-forming marine animalcule ( Botryllus schlosseri ) as a prime example of a naturally occurring graft formation and rejection or immunological tolerance is explored as a model of human transplant rejection. Past and current research also deal with mainly cell adhesion of leukocytes and the metastasis behavior of tumor cells.
Outside of Immunology Weissman has been known in recent years, a broad public through his political and ethical commitment to the freedom of stem cell research and the transfer of research findings on adult hematopoietic stem cells in many other tissues, and in particular stem cells that make up the nervous tissue. Ethically he considers it necessary, to more quickly explore adult stem cells for many seriously ill patients, for which there is currently no cure and to utilize. This Weissman is also known in the media via California and his lecture and discussion as an expert in adult stem cells in the U.S. Senate. In addition, he also practices public criticism of the media and other scientists when they report too easily on dubious or erroneous stem cell results.
His research laboratories today continue the development stages and gene regulation of blood cell-forming stem cells, and many other adult stem cells from human and mouse. Weissman also propagates much the theory of cancer stem cell in order to focus future cancer therapies more on fighting the cancer stem cell and thereby improve current cancer therapies.
Weissman has successfully founded several biotech companies, especially SyStemix, StemCells and the successor companies of SyStemix. Some of the first genetic engineering company was or he is a consultant. California is now precisely because Weissman to the world's leading region of the ( adult ) stem cell research. Currently 3 billion U.S. dollars will be invested by private investors in California alone in stem cell research, as much as anywhere else in the world. Many of his numerous national and international students were a professor at American and European universities, founded their own high-tech companies or received top positions in leading biotech companies. One of his early American students, Eugene C. Butcher has been awarded the Swedish Crafoord Prize, which is awarded for areas for which there is no Nobel Prize.
Awards
Too many highly prestigious awards its award belongs as "California Scientist of the Year 2002 ", which have also received many Californian Nobel Prize winners. In 1994/ 1995 he was president of the American Association of Immunologists. Weissman was 2008 together with Hans R. Scholer and Shin'ya Yamanaka with the Robert Koch prize. Weissman 2007 was awarded at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria, with the Ilse & Helmut Wachter Award., 2004, he received the Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal, 2009 Passano Award and 2013 the Max Delbrück Medal.
Publications
More than 100 of its more than 600 publications have appeared in the most prestigious scientific journals Cell, Science, Nature and PNAS.