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Legendary Surgeon Maurice Galante Dies
Maurice Galante, M.D., a legendary master surgeon at UCSF and renaissance man, died on February 5, 2013. His career is memorialized by the Maurice Galante Lecture Program and Maurice Galante Distinguished Professorship.
David Donner, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor
Division of General Surgery
Contact Information
San Francisco, California 94143-1932
(415) 353-9294
Fax: (415) 353-9296
david.donner@ucsfmedctr.org
BiographyEducation
- Queens College, New York, NY, B.A., 1966, Chemistry
Postdoctoral Training
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, NY, Ph.D., 1972, Chemistry
- Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, post-doc, 1972-1973, Biochemistry
Program Affiliations
- Surgical Oncology Laboratory
- Surgical Oncology Program
- UCSF Department of Surgery
- UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Research Interests
- Coordinate regulation of pro-apoptotic and pro-survival genes
- Death receptor signaling
- Inflammation in the initiation and progression of cancer
- Sall2 transcription factor as a cancer biomarker
- Tumor suppressor-oncoprotein networks
Biography
Dr. Donner is a molecular-cell biologist in the Surgical Oncology Research Laboratory. Dr. Donner received his undergraduate degree for Queens College of the City University of New York. He conducted doctoral research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the area of chemical evolution and the origins of life on earth.
His studies on chemical evolution contributed to the first Viking probe that searched for life on Mars. After postdoctoral studies in neurobiology conducted under the mentorship of Dr. George P. Hess at Cornell University, Ithaca New York, Dr. Donner joined the faculty of Cornell University Medical College and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. There Dr. Donner defined how mitogens, cytokines, and their receptors contribute to cancer.
Dr. Donner served an eight-year term as Director of the Biochemistry and Genetics Division at Sloan-Kettering as well as serving on the Executive Committee of the Institute. Dr. Donner has also served on numerous Editorial Boards and Grant Review Committees for the National Institutes of Health and as an Editor for "Endocrinology".
Dr. Donner moved from Sloan-Kettering to the Indiana University School of Medicine as Professor of Physiology, Microbiology and Immunology, and a Member of the Indiana University Cancer Center. Since joining the faculty of UCSF as Professor in Residence in the Department of Surgery and a member of the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2005, Dr. Donner's laboratory has focused its efforts on identifying and understanding the functions of biomarkers that may predict the course and likelihood of recurrence of human colon cancer.
Dr. Donner is the recipient of numerous awards including the NIH Career Development Award, the American Cancer Society Faculty Research Award, Louise & Alston Boyer Young Investigator Award for Laboratory Research, American Diabetes Association Research and Development Award, NY State Regents Scholarship, and the NY State Scholar Incentive Award.
Research Summary
Dr. Donner's research is aimed at understanding how derangements in tumor suppressor-oncoprotein signaling networks are permissive of cancer. Of particular interest is how signaling through "death receptors" may sometimes induce cancer cells to undergo programmed cell death, yet in other instances may promote the aggressive growth and spread of malignancies. Recently, Dr. Donner's research group identified a novel factor called Sall2 that may act as a molecular switch to determine whether life or death signals predominate downstream of death receptors. Furthermore, the absence or presence of polymorphic forms of Sall2 appears predictive of whether colon cancer will recur. Considerable effort is being directed towards determining whether Sall2 may be a clinically useful biomarker that can predict the course of colon cancer and whether the malignancy will be responsive to therapy.
Selected Publications
- Tissue transglutaminase regulates matrix metalloproteinase-2 in
ovarian cancer by modulating cAMP-response element-binding protein
activity.Satpathy M, Shao M, Emerson R, Donner DB, Matei D.
J Biol Chem. 2009 Jun 5;284(23):15390-9. Epub 2009 Mar 26.
PMID: 19324884 - Sall2 is a novel p75NTR-interacting protein that links NGF
signalling to cell cycle progression and neurite outgrowth.
Pincheira R, Baerwald M, Dunbar JD, Donner DB.
EMBO J. 2009 Feb 4;28(3):261-73. Epub 2009 Jan 8.
PMID: 19131967 - Galectin-3 regulates apoptosis and doxorubicin chemoresistance
in papillary thyroid cancer cells.
Lin CI, Whang EE, Abramson MA, Donner DB, Bertagnolli MM, Moore FD Jr, Ruan DT.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2009 Feb 6;379(2):626-31. Epub 2009 Jan 3.
PMID: 19124005 - The Sall2 transcription factor is a novel p75NTR binding
protein that promotes the development and function of
neurons.
Pincheira R, Donner DB.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008 Nov;1144:53-5.
PMID: 19076363 - Mitogen-inducible gene-6 expression correlates with survival
and is an independent predictor of recurrence in BRAF(V600E)
positive papillary thyroid cancers.
Ruan DT, Warren RS, Moalem J, Chung KW, Griffin AC, Shen W, Duh QY, Nakakura E, Donner DB, Khanafshar E, Weng J, Clark OH, Kebebew E.
Surgery. 2008 Dec;144(6):908-13; discussion 913-4.
PMID: 19040996 - Homeodomain transcription factor NKX2.2 functions in immature
cells to control enteroendocrine differentiation and is expressed
in gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors.
Wang YC, Gallego-Arteche E, Iezza G, Yuan X, Matli MR, Choo SP, Zuraek MB, Gogia R, Lynn FC, German MS, Bergsland EK, Donner DB, Warren RS, Nakakura EK.
Endocr Relat Cancer. 2009 Mar;16(1):267-79. Epub 2008 Nov 5.
PMID: 18987169
