Owen Witte Explained

Owen Witte
Birth Date:17 May 1949
Birth Place:Brooklyn, New York, US
Alma Mater:Cornell University (B.S.) Stanford University School of Medicine (M.D.)
Website:www.stemcell.ucla.edu/member/witte
Workplaces:Stanford University
MIT
University of California, Los Angeles
Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Owen Witte (born May 17, 1949) is an American physician-scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a University Professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, founding director emeritus of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, and the UC Regents’ David Saxon Presidential Chair in developmental immunology (1989–present).[1] Witte is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator (1986–2016) and a member of the President's Cancer Panel (2012 to 2016),[2] the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Cancer Research Academy of the AACR. He serves on numerous editorial boards and scientific advisory boards for academic centers and biotechnology companies.

Witte should be recognized for multiple seminal contributions over the last 50 years impacting our understanding of human leukemias, immune disorders and epithelial cancers, which have defined new targets for attack that have foreshadowed and strongly influenced the development of new therapies that have changed medical practice and patient outcomes. His discovery of the tyrosine kinase activity in the ABL1 protein[3] and the demonstration of the BCR-ABL oncoproteins in leukemias[4] was one of the preclinical discoveries that led to the development of Gleevec, the first targeted therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Witte also co-discovered the gene for Bruton's tyrosine kinase,[5] a protein essential for normal B-lymphocyte development that, when mutated, causes the onset of X-linked agammaglobulinemia.[6] This finding stimulated the creation of new targeted therapies like Ibrutinib that have transformed treatment for CLL, B cell lymphomas, multiple myeloma and certain autoimmune diseases.

His current research focuses on characterizing the stem cells for epithelial cancers of the prostate and other organs in order to define new and more targeted therapies.[7] [8] Using tissue modeling techniques, Witte discovered the prostate stem cell antigen that is up-regulated in prostate cancer,[9] identified the human prostate stem cell population[10] and determined that the protein N-Myc, which is produced by the gene MYCN, leads to the development of aggressive neuroendocrine prostate cancer tumors.[11] Recent striking observations using a human epithelial tissue recombination/transformation system have shown that prostate and other tissues can be driven to an adenocarcinoma state by defined oncogenic signaling, and further trans-differentiated by epigenetic control to highly aggressive small cell carcinoma with neuroendocrine features — defining new immune targets for therapy under active investigation.

Education

Witte earned his B.S. degree in microbiology from Cornell University in 1971. He earned his M.D. degree from Stanford University in 1976, specializing in molecular virology, immunology and medicine.

He completed his predoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Irving Weissman (Stanford University; 1971 to 1976) and his postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Dr. David Baltimore (MIT; 1976 to 1980).

Awards

Notes and References

  1. Vogt-James. Mirabai. August 3, 2015. The 2015 AQACR Clowes Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research. Cancer Immunology Research. 3. 8. 846–848. 10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-15-0142. 26242762. free.
  2. Web site: President's Cancer Panel.
  3. Witte ON, Dasgupta A, Baltimore D . February 28, 1980. Abelson murine leukemia virus protein is phosphorylated in vitro to form phosphotyrosine.. Nature . 283 . 5750. 826–831. 10.1038/283826a0. 6244493 . 1980Natur.283..826W. 4239008.
  4. Konopka JB, Watanabe SM, Witte ON . July 1984. An alteration of the human c-abl protein in K562 leukemia cells unmasks associated tyrosine kinase activity. Cell . 37 . 3. 1035–42. 10.1016/0092-8674(84)90438-0. 6204766. 34525263.
  5. Tsukada S . Saffran DC . Rawlings DJ . Parolini O . Allen RC . Klisak I . January 29, 1993. Deficient expression of a B-cell cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase in human X-linked agammaglobulinemia. Cell . 72 . 2 . 279–90. 10.1016/0092-8674(93)90667-f. 8425221. 32339052 . etal.
  6. Rawlings DJ . Scharenberg AM . Park H . Wahl MI . Lin S . Kato RM . February 9, 1996. Activation of Btk by a phosphorylation mechanism initiated by src family kinases. Science . 271 . 5250 . 822–5. 10.1126/science.271.5250.822. 8629002. etal. 1996Sci...271..822R . 42666246 .
  7. Web site: SU2C Scientific Research Teams, Owen N. Witte, M.D.. Stand Up To Cancer.
  8. Web site: Owen N. Witte, MD Class of 2014 . American Association for Cancer Research.
  9. Reiter, R.E.. Gu, Z.. Watabe, T.. Thomas, G.. Szigeti, K.. Davis, E.. Wahl, M.. Nisitani, S.. Yamashiro, J.. Le Beau, M.M.. Loda, M.. Witte, O.N.. February 17, 1998. Prostate stem cell antigen: A cell surface marker overexpressed in prostate cancer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 95 . 4. 1735–40. 10.1073/pnas.95.4.1735. 9465086. 1998PNAS...95.1735R. 19171. free.
  10. Goldstein, A.S.. Huang, J.. Guo, C.. Garraway, I.P.. Witte, O.N.. July 30, 2010. Identification of a cell-of-origin for human prostate cancer. Science . 329 . 5991 . 568–71. 10.1126/science.1189992. 20671189. 2917982. 2010Sci...329..568G.
  11. Lee JK, Phillips JW, Smith BA, Park JW, Stoyanova T, Clark PM, Baertsch R, Sokolov A, Meyerowitz JG, Mathis C, Cheng D, Stuart JM, Gustafson WC, Huang J, Witte ON. April 11, 2016. N-Myc drives small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma initiated from human prostate epithelial cells . Cancer Cell . 29 . 4. 536–547. 10.1016/j.ccell.2016.03.001. 27050099. 4829466.
  12. Web site: American Association for Cancer Research. AACR.org.
  13. Web site: The 2014 Rowley Prize is awarded to Dr Owen N. Witte. cml-foundation.org.
  14. Web site: UC regents appoint Dr. Owen Witte University Professor. Mirabai. Vogt-James. UCLA Newsroom.
  15. Web site: AACR Announces 2024 Scientific Achievement Award Recipients . 2024-03-01 . American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) . en.

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