Ludwig Johns Hopkins Co-Director Kenneth Kinzler and Ludwig Harvard scientist Myles Brown are among 84 new members and 21 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Sciences today in recognition of their significant achievements in original research. Ludwig Cancer Research congratulates Kinzler and Brown for this well-deserved recognition.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and—with the National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council—provides science, technology, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.
Kinzler is also professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Sydney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research focuses on understanding the genetic mutations that give rise to cancer. His laboratory has identified mutations of the APC pathway that appear to initiate the majority of colorectal cancers and IDH1/2 mutations that underly many gliomas. Most recently, they have pioneered integrated whole genome analyses of human cancers through expression, copy number, and mutational analyses of all the coding genes in several human cancer types including colorectal, breast, pancreatic and brain malignancies.
Brown is also professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and director of the Center for Functional Cancer Epigenetics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research focuses on the factors underlying the hormonal responsiveness of human cancers. Brown’s laboratory is focused primarily on the role of steroid hormone receptors and their coregulators and is currently defining the programs of gene expression controlled by steroid hormones and their receptors in relevant cell types.