June 13, 2000
Dana-Farber physician-researcher named winner of the 2000 Discover Magazine's Award For Technological Innovation
11th Annual Awards Given to Nineteen Medical and Scientific Researchers
Dr. Todd Golub, pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and research scientist at the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, has been awarded the DISCOVER Magazine Award for Technological Innovation in the "Health" category for his pioneering work using "DNA chips" to diagnose cancers.
The technology, which is shared by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Whitehead Institute, consists of a series of plastic cartridges and a computerized analyzer. The cartridges, which are the size of a small pocket calculator, are embedded with thousands of tiny compartments, each containing the DNA for a different gene. When a tumor's RNA - a chemical "mirror image" of its activated genes - is placed on the microchip and scanned by a computer, a molecular profile of the DNA is created enabling physicians to see an exact fingerprint of an individual's specific cancer.
Using this approach, and customized software developed by Golub and his colleagues, physicians are able to locate clinically useful patterns in the data and create tailored therapies for cancer patients. In an early clinical study, Golub tested two subtypes of leukemia and was able to type the cancers with 100 percent accuracy (published in the Oct. 15, 1999 issue of Science).
"This important technology opens the door to testing breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, and a variety of other malignancies for distinctions that have not been recognized in the past, and that suggest new forms of treatment," Golub says.
The technology may also enable researchers to find tumor-causing genes that are good targets for new therapies. "If we really understand the genetic abnormalities that define prostate cancer, we'll be better able to target therapies at critical genes," Golub remarks.
Golub's work illustrates how clinical and basic research are rapidly converging as physicians and scientists collaborate to develop new ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent disease. As an oncologist at Dana-Farber, Golub developed an appreciation for the key problems facing cancer diagnosis and treatment. At the Whitehead Institute, he used the advances in basic research on genomics, DNA arrays, and computational biology to devise new solutions for these problems.
Golub began at Dana-Farber in 1991 as a clinical fellow and currently is an assistant professor of Pediatrics at Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School. In addition to caring for patients in Dana-Farber's Jimmy Fund Clinic, Golub also serves as a research scientist and is member of the scientific advisory board at the Institute's newly formed Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Cancer Genomics Center.
Nineteen winners and finalists in the 11th annual awards program presented by the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation will be featured in DISCOVER's special July 2000 Awards issue, on newsstands June 19. This is the first time that DISCOVER has revealed winners' names prior to its annual Awards weekend, June 23 and 24 at Walt Disney World's Epcot.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principle teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States and is the only center in New England to be both a federally designated Comprehensive Cancer Center and Center for AIDS Research.
