 | Ira Mellman |
Ira Mellman, the new Sterling Professor of Cell Biology, is studying how individual cells organize their internal components to accomplish higher-order functions relevant to cancer and the body's natural immunity to cancer.
Appointment to a Sterling Professorship is one of the highest tributes Yale bestows on faculty members.
Mellman is exploring fundamental questions of membrane traffic -- that is, how specific molecules find each other and their intended sites of residence in the interior of cells. His research team has focused on two areas: identifying the molecular mechanisms responsible for directing membrane components to their correct locations in epithelial cells, neurons and lymphocytes; and determining how the immune system processes antigens, agents that induce the formation of protective responses to foreign invaders as well as to cancer cells. A member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research since 1999, Mellman has also helped translate insights from these laboratory studies into new therapeutics, some of which are already being investigated in clinical trials.
Mellman has founded two companies: Cellular Genomics, Inc. of Branford, Connecticut, which combines cell biology and chemical genetics with genomic analysis to develop targets and pharmaceuticals to treat cancer and inflammation; and Athersys, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio, a late-stage functional genomics company.
A 1973 graduate of Oberlin College, Mellman earned a Ph.D. in genetics at the Yale School of Medicine in 1978. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at The Rockefeller University in New York 1978-1980, becoming an assistant professor there in 1980. He came to Yale in 1981 as an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology, becoming associate professor with tenure in 1985 and professor in 1991. He currently chairs that department. Mellman was also appointed professor of immunobiology in 1997 and was founding director of the University-wide Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences until 2001.
The author of over 150 scientific articles, Mellman has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cell Biology since 1999 and is on the editorial boards of Cell, The Journal of Experimental Medicine and the International Journal of Cancer. He also serves on the boards of the Max-Planck Institute in Dresden, the Queensland (Australia) Biotechnology Institute and the Skirball Institute at New York University Medical School.
A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mellman has been a senior fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, since 1998 when he was awarded the Newton-Abraham Professorship there. He has also received the Leukemia Society's President's Award, the Junior Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society, and the Yale Science & Engineering Society Medal.
T H I S
Mellman awarded Sterling post in cell biology
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