Anton Wellstein, MD, PhD
MicroRNA

 

Anton Wellstein, MD, PhD, is the Associate Director for Basic Science at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a leading basic science researcher in the field of the molecular oncology and holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Oncology and Pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center. His areas of expertise include mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis.

Wellstein initially trained in medicine at the J. Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and practiced medicine for seven years. After postgraduate training and a PhD in pharmacology, Wellstein chose to focus exclusively on basic science research, developing new therapies for the treatment of cancer. He currently holds the rights to eight patents and pending patents, and has licensed one of these technologies to a Washington-area biotechnology company for drug development. Several others are under negotiation. He has published over 120 original papers and serves on several NIH study sections and committees.

His research centers around angiogenesis factors released from tumor cells as molecularly defined therapeutic targets. Wellstein’s laboratory purified a novel heparin–binding polypeptide growth factor (pleiotrophin, PTN) from supernatants of breast cancer cells and cloned the respective genomic and cDNA. In addition to this gene product, he has engaged in an extensive series of studies on another gene that modulates fibroblast growth factor activity; FGF–BP. Wellstein has studied transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation, biological function, tissue-specific expression during development and carcinogenesis as well as in a series of diseased states in mouse and human. His laboratory has received funding from the NIH, Department of Defense, the American Cancer Society, and several other foundations.

« Previous Speaker | Next Speaker »