Tyrosine phosphatases in health and disease

Dr Benjamin Neel
Director or Research, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada 

Dr Benjamin Neel is Director of Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada.  He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of cancer biology and cellular signal transduction.  Dr Neel earned his PhD in Viral Oncology from the Rockefeller University in 1982, under Dr William S. Hayward, and his Medical Degree from Cornell University Medical School the following year.  He completed medical internship and residency training at the Beth Israel Hospital from 1983-85, and then pursued post-doctoral work with Dr Raymond L. Erikson at Harvard University from 1985-1988.  He was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1988 at Harvard Medical School and began his own independent research laboratory in the Molecular Medicine Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre.  He rose through the ranks at Harvard Medical School, becoming a Professor of Medicine in 1999.  He also served as the Director of the Cancer Biology Program since 1994 and as Deputy Director for Basic Research, Hematology Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre since 2003.  In 2006, he was appointed to the William B. Castle Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In 2007, he was appointed as the Director of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre Research and joined the faculty of the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto.

Dr Neel’s scientific interests are in the areas of developmental diseases and malignancies caused by defects in the protein-tyrosine phosphatase Shp2 and components of the RAS-ERK-MAPK pathway.  He also has a long-standing interest in the role of the protein-tyrosine phosphatase PTP-1B in metabolic disease and breast cancer.  Other interests include functional genomic characterization of breast cancer cell lines using genome-wide lentiviral shRNA dropout screens, and the molecular and cellular basis of drug response and resistance and the tumor/microenvironment interaction in ovarian carcinoma.  

This lecture is free and open to all, pre-registration is not required.