I hear that Gerald Crabtree is going to move from Stanford to Cambridge (sabbatical) so he can work on the new Hoechst/Ariad joint venture in gene therapy. Im long the options, so I hope he has a productive year. The following is a blurb from the Stanford Report on his being voted into the Natl Academy of Sciences
Gerald R. Crabtree
Using the techniques of molecular biology, Crabtree has focused on tracking
the cellular messages the immune system uses to marshal its forces against
pathogens and other invaders. Along the way, working with chemist Stuart
L. Schreiber of Harvard, he defined the molecules that turn on genes essential
for T-cell activation and differentiation, including the gene for interleukin-2,
which stimulates immune cells to grow and divide and attract others to the
area.
Crabtree, who received his M.D. from Temple University, came to Stanford
in 1985 from the National Institutes of Health, where he was a senior
investigator.
His basic research has led to several findings that hold great promise for
clinical applications. Crabtree and Schreiber found a way to install a
biological "switch" in human cells that turns genes on and off as needed. The
discovery may open a new way to apply gene therapy to human illnesses. In
existing gene therapy, a patient's cells are implanted with a gene that tells
them to make a protein that helps fight or resist disease. A current problem
with gene therapy is that the implanted gene works continuously. But many
genes in the body, such as the one for insulin, work only intermittently.
Crabtree's finding could ultimately allow specialists to regulate gene therapy
with pills. One pill would turn on a protein-making gene, and then a second
pill would turn it off. Stanford and Harvard have sold a license for using the
"switch" therapeutically to Ariad Gene Therapeutics Inc. |
