Concept
Colorectal polyp
Related people (23)
Johan Auwerx
Johan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Douglas Hanahan
Douglas Hanahan, born in Seattle, Washington, USA, received a bachelors degree in Physics from MIT (1976), and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard (1983). He worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York (1978-88) initially as a graduate student and then as a group leader. From 1988-2010 he was on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at UCSF in San Francisco. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007), the Institute of Medicine (USA) (2008), the US National Academy of Science (2009), and EMBO (2010). In 2011, Hanahan received an honorary degree from the University of Dundee (UK).
Georges Wagnières
Georges Wagnières received his diploma degree (MSc) in physics from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1986. He obtained his doctorate in science (PhD) in physics (Biomedical optics) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL) in 1992 and did a postdoctoral work in the Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine (Harvard Medical School), Boston, USA, from 1993 to 1994. He also obtained a Master degree in Management of Technology delivered by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) of Lausanne University and the EPFL in 2001. Georges Wagnières manages a research group active in the fields of: - Detection of early superficial cancers by fluorescence imaging. - Characterization of early superficial cancers by high magnification narrow band imaging. - In vivo and in vitro measurement of the vascular and tissular oxygen concentration by time-resolved luminescence spectroscopy and imaging. - Preclinical and clinical study of new photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy (PDT). - Treatment of neurodegenerative conditions (Alzheimer, Parkinson's diseases) by photobiomodulation. - Preclinical and clinical photodynamic therapy of inflammatory bowel diseases and atheroscerotic plaque. - Improvement of the selective vascular extravasation of chemotherapeutic agents by PDT. - Monitoring the light dosimetry during PDT by fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging. - Monitoring laser treatments of the retina by reflectance imaging. - Light dosimetry and tissue optical spectroscopy. - Radiometry. - Development of light delivery systems for biomedical applications. Georges Wagnières is also co-founder and was chairman of one spin-off companies: - Medlight SA, founded in July 1997, which develops, produces and commercializes light distributors for photodynamic therapy. Georges Wagnières has currently authored more than 235 papers (more than 150 in international journals with review board) and is inventor of 18 patents. He supervised 12 PhD students up to now, and currently teaches biomedical optics and photomedicine in master programs and doctoral schools. In addition, he gives the course entitled "Physique Générale I" to biology first year students registered to the Biology School of the Lausanne's University. MAIN PUBLICATIONS Please visit: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lifmet/wagnieres/publications/
Michel Aguet
Dr. Michel Aguet, MD, held positions in academia and industry (Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich; Head of Molecular Oncology, Genentech, So. San Francisco) before he was appointed director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) (1996-2009). In the context of the integration of ISREC into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), he was appointed as Full Professor at the newly established School of Life Sciences in 2005. From 2001-2013 he directed the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Molecular Oncology, a national program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation to encourage translational cancer research and for which ISREC was the leading house. Dr. Aguet has been a SAB member in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry and venture capital industry since 1997.
A large part of his scientific career was devoted to exploring the molecular biology of interferons (cloning of the interferon gamma receptor, generation of various interferon signaling mutants in the mouse) and, in collaboration with Prof. Charles Weissmann, to investigating the role of prion related protein PrP in mouse prion disease models. In recent years his research focused on characterizing the role of BCL9 proteins, which are part of the Wnt/beta-catenin transcriptional activation complex, in regulating stem cell traits in intestinal epithelium and colorectal cancer. His laboratory is now closed due to retirement.