Adrian Salic, Ph.D.

Distinguished Scientist Award Recipients

Adrian Salic, Ph.D.

Harvard Medical School
2007 Distinguished Scientist Award

Education:
University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Romania, B.S., 1992, Preclinical
   Sciences
Harvard University, Ph.D., 2000, Cell and Developmental Biology
Harvard Medical School, 2000-2001, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Marc Kirschner
Harvard Medical School, 2001-2005, Postdoctoral Fellow,
   Dr. Timothy Mitchison

"Support from The Sontag Foundation comes at a critical time in my research career and will have a major impact on the research done in our lab. It will allow us to take new, creative approaches to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which Suppressor of Fused and Hedgehog signaling contribute to medulloblastomas."

-- Dr. Adrian Salic

About Dr. Salic's Research:
Medulloblastoma is the most frequent brain cancer in children and remains a major cause of pediatric cancer death. Current treatments (surgical excision, chemotherapy and radiation of the brain and spine) are associated with debilitating long-term side effects due to their high toxicity and low specificity. It is thus critical to find novel medulloblastoma therapies that target tumor cells specifically while leaving healthy brain cells intact.

Many medulloblastomas have mutations in a cell-cell communication pathway called the Hedgehog pathway. This pathway controls the proliferation of cerebellar cells from which medulloblastomas arise. Too much Hedgehog pathway activity results in uncontrolled cell growth, which in turn can lead to medulloblastoma. In spite of the critical importance of the Hedgehog pathway, we know little about how it controls cell proliferation and malignant transformation. A detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in Hedgehog signaling is fundamental to understanding how medulloblastomas appear and to finding powerful and specific new therapies.

This proposal focuses on elucidating a component of Hedgehog signaling called Suppressor of Fused (SuFu) functions. SuFu plays a major role in keeping the Hedgehog pathway off. We will use novel biochemical approaches and experiments in medulloblastoma cells to answer some outstanding questions involving SuFu. We plan to:

  1. Determine how SuFu keeps the Hedgehog pathway off
  2. Discover and study other SuFu-interacting proteins
  3. Elucidate how SuFu itself is regulated

These studies will advance our understanding of Hedgehog signaling, will clarify important steps in medulloblastoma formation and will identify novel therapeutic targets in medulloblastoma.

Accolades:

"Adrian is a very deep thinker, a broad reader of scientific literature, and exceptionally good experimentalist, an adventuresome and creative scientist and an exceptionally dedicated and motivated worker."

-- Marc W. Kirschner. Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School

"Dr. Salic is creative, technically brilliant, and wonderfully interactive. He is at the outset of an outstanding academic career. There is no doubt that a grant from The Sontag Foundation will be invaluable in helping him launch his research program."

-- Joan S. Brugge, Ph.D
Harvard Medical School

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