Daniel A. Haber is the director of the

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

Cancer Center, a professor of oncology at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

(HHMI).

Career

Haber earned his B.S. in life sciences and

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

in toxicology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his M.D. and Ph.D. in biophysics from

Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...

under the mentorship of Robert T. Schimke. He did his postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with David E. Housman. As a postdoc, he started to study Wilms' tumor and characterized the tumor suppressor gene

WT1 Wilms tumor protein (WT33) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''WT1'' gene on chromosome 11p. Function This gene encodes a transcription factor that contains four zinc finger motifs at the C-terminus and a proline / glutamine-rich ...

and WTX. In 2003, he recognized that certain patients with lung cancer responded well to the drug

Iressa Gefitinib, sold under the brand name Iressa, is a medication used for certain breast, lung and other cancers. Gefitinib is an EGFR inhibitor, like erlotinib, which interrupts signaling through the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in targe ...

where few other patients showed effect. Sequencing the patient's cancers, they identified specific mutation in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) that resulted in sensitivity to certain drugs. By linking mutations to drug sensitivity, they were able to propose new mechanisms for targeted therapies by examining the accumulation of certain mutations in cancer cells. His lab is now focused on studying the genetics of cancer particularly in

circulating tumor cell A circulating tumor cell (CTC) is a cell that has shed into the vasculature or lymphatics from a primary tumor and is carried around the body in the blood circulation. CTCs can extravasate and become ''seeds'' for the subsequent growth of additional ...

s with

Mehmet Toner Mehmet Toner (born 1958) is a Turkish biomedical engineer. He is currently the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, with a joint appointment as professor at the Harvard-M ...

. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is an editor of ''Cell'' and ''Cancer Cell''.

External links

His Howard Hughes Medical Institute bioHaber Lab website

References

Living people American biochemists Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Harvard Medical School faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Stanford University School of Medicine alumni Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the National Academy of Medicine Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-biochemist-stub