Developmental Molecular Mechanisms

BIOGRAPHY

CURRENT POSITIONS:
Peter K Jackson is Director and Staff Scientist at Genentech Inc, Department of Cell Regulation, 1 DNA Way, South San Francisco, California 94080, USA and Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Pathology

BACKGROUND:
Dr Jackson joined Genentech in 2005 as a Staff Scientist, after ten years as a faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2006, he was named Director of Cell Regulation. As Director of Cell Regulation, he helps define the strategy for therapeutics in critical physiological pathways including cell growth and the cell cycle, and to discover, validate and develop targets in these pathways.

AWARDS AND HONORS:
• Eppley Visiting Professor of Oncology, University Nebraska Medical School 2007
• Elected Pluto Society Member 2005
• Kirsch Scholar 2003
• Hume Faculty Scholar, Stanford University 1999
• William Cohen Memorial Lecturer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 1999
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New Investigator Award 1998
• Lutje-Stubbs Scholar Award 1998
• American Cancer Society, New Investigator Award 1997
• Baxter Foundation Award 1997
• Merck Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation 1991-1994

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
My laboratory has worked on the biochemistry of the cell cycle, including DNA replication and mitosis. Much of our effort has gone toward understanding how proteolytic degradation by the ubiquitin proteasome system regulates the cell cycle. We have made key contributions to understanding how proteins that regulate the cell cycle, called cyclins, accumulate and are destroyed in vertebrate cells and in eggs. A central finding was our discovery of inhibitors of E3 ubiquitin ligases and their role in cell cycle control. We have identified several critical factors regulating cyclins and have linked their misregulation to cancer, proliferative disease and senescence. We continue to define important regulators in mitosis and in the ubiquitin pathway. Ongoing projects include further definition of ubiquitin pathways important for cancer and new targets associated with mitosis and the cytoskeleton. Further, we have explored how cyclin activity is regulated in animal cells by central G1 signaling events, including those linked to cytokinesis and endocytosis.

Our recent work has also focused on signaling through the primary cilium. The primary cilium is an organelle with critical roles in signaling in tissues including the retina, nervous system, kidney and sensory organs. The importance of the cilia in signaling was only recently appreciated, but this structure organizes a still unknown number of receptor systems. These pathways are genetically linked to important degenerative diseases including renal cystic disease, obesity, diabetes, retinopathies and cancer signaling. We have used proteomic approaches to define regulatory networks linked to proteins that are defective in human diseases called ciliopathies. We are looking for critical receptor classes linked to these diseases and evaluating the therapeutic opportunities presented by these receptors.