Yale's sexual predator prof Joseph Schlesinger still an Annie Le murder suspect?

[Dig]

you know I bet the fbi are going, f-k it...

the prison planet members  are doing our work for us, let's go grab a brewsky.

I mean really, why are we the ones doing this crapola anyway. this is the thing that really makes me a bit pissed, they could have come up with all this info plus 1,000 other pieces of important info 3 days ago.

national reconnaissance already has all communications in the area for the past year, wtf?

[Satyagraha]

you know I bet the fbi are going, f-k it...

the prison planet members  are doing our work for us, let's go grab a brewsky.

I mean really, why are we the ones doing this crapola anyway. this is the thing that really makes me a bit pissed, they could have come up with all this info plus 1,000 other pieces of important info 3 days ago.

national reconnaissance already has all communications in the area for the past year, wtf?

Sane - that suggests that they are actually trying to solve a case.. and it seems they're more likely being directed to follow a script. The case was solved before the murder happened.


(Hmm ..where's OG...)

Suggest that the Bitch Lizard Queen arranged this to protect the H1N1 program ... poor Annie knew too much and, with her interest in investigation, posed a threat to the genocide.

[Dig]

Sane - that suggests that they are actually trying to solve a case.. and it seems they're more likely being directed to follow a script. The case was solved before the murder happened.

shhhhh, kind of my point

[Satyagraha]

shhhhh, kind of my point

Still no sarcasm emoticon. Fall for it every time.

[sociostudent]

you know I bet the fbi are going, f-k it...

the prison planet members  are doing our work for us, let's go grab a brewsky.

I mean really, why are we the ones doing this crapola anyway. this is the thing that really makes me a bit pissed, they could have come up with all this info plus 1,000 other pieces of important info 3 days ago.

national reconnaissance already has all communications in the area for the past year, wtf?

I know..they need to fire the people at the FBI who are sitting on all this evidence with their thumbs directly up their bums, and hire us instead.

Except that they're being told to sit on the evidence or they will surely die or at least WILL be fired. Either way, they're not gonna give the job to real infowarriors, that's for damn sure.

[nofakenews]

The grounds around the pharmacology laboratory of Yale university looked as pristine today as might be expected from this pillar of the Ivy League, with freshly cut lawns and a blaze of late summer flowers. Only the yellow crime scene tape that surrounded the complex betrayed a sense of profound unease.

As students and faculty members hurried by, they carried with them the news that a body had hours earlier been found hidden behind a wall in the basement of the laboratory.

Police have yet to confirm the identity, but the body is presumed to be that of Annie Le, a 24-year-old post-graduate student from California who disappeared on Tuesday when she was last seen entering the building.

The body was found on Sunday night - the day on which Le had been planning to marry. The recognition that what began as a missing-person's case had turned into the first murder inquiry at Yale since December 1998 was greeted with fear and consternation around the university's training hospitals and medical research facilities that are concentrated in the vicinity of the pharmacology lab. As one woman student put it: "We're all scared shitless."

"It's put a dampener on the whole beginning of the semester," said Brian Merry, a public health student. "Until we heard the news we'd been hoping she would be found alive."

Melissa Nguyen, a developmental services worker, said she had thought twice before coming into a meeting close to the laboratory. "It preys on your mind. Everybody is a little guarded right now, being cautious about where they go and who they go with, particularly women. Le was a young, vulnerable woman and it's a tragic loss."

Last Tuesday morning Le took a Yale bus from her home, arriving at the laboratory at 10 Amistad Street, about a mile from the core of Yale campus, at about 10am. The building is one of the most high-security premises in the university, by dint of its sensitive research into medical drugs.

One of its 75 video cameras recorded Le entering the building, but to the puzzle of investigators no footage was seen of her ever leaving. Her possessions, including money, credit cards, cell phone and ID, were found in her third-floor office. She also had a desk in the basement where she was carrying out experiments as part of a PhD into the role of proteins in certain metabolic diseases such as diabetes.

A source who worked with Le at the laboratory - describing her as a "clever, beautiful, active and very hard-working girl" - said she had been conducting experiments on mice.

The colleague, who asked not to be named, said that because of the controversy surrounding animal experiments, the basement of the building was particularly securely guarded and Le would have had to use her ID card to gain access to it.

The body is understood to have been found stuffed behind a wall in the basement. Police are also analysing some blood-stained clothes, that may not be Le's, which were found hidden behind ceiling tiles in the lab.

The dean of the school of medicine, Robert Alpern, told the student paper Yale Daily News that the level of security was such that it suggests the murderer was someone with entry permission to the basement. "It certainly would be extremely difficult for someone from outside Yale to get into that space. Not impossible, but extremely difficult."

Further weight was given to the theory of an inside killer by police, who attempted to assuage fears among students by saying the murder was not a random act, adding that no-one on the campus was in danger.

A spokesman for New Haven police would not comment on whether any suspect had been identified, but nobody has yet been taken into custody.

The likelihood that the killer came from within the community of medical students, faculty or support staff in this highly rarified academic environment has merely heightened the apprehensions of people working here. Sumayya Ahmad, a medical student at Yale who is based at the adjacent building to the Le's laboratory, said that she had been unable to sleep after she heard the news. "It's clearly someone who had access to the building and that's very scary - to think that someone you know and work with did it. We're all shaken up about it - it really messes with your idea of what's safe."

The medical school was planning to bring staff and students together last night at a meeting with police in which people could vent their anxieties. A candle-lit vigil was also being planned.

The tragedy of Le's presumed murder was heightened by the fact that the body was found on her wedding day. She had been due to marry Jonathan Widawsky, a physics graduate student at Columbia university, in a ceremony in Long Island.

In the days leading up to her disappearance, Le had been studying Hebrew, as her fiancé is Jewish. She expressed her excitement about the wedding via Facebook. "Lucky I'm in love with my best friend ", she wrote. "Less than one week til the big day!" Police have said that Widawsky is not a suspect and has been cooperating with the investigation.

Before her disappearance Le expressed concern about security living in Yale and the surrounding town. She wrote an article published in the medical school's internal magazine in February called Crime and Safety in New Haven.

http://bbs.yale.edu/images/B10_1.pdf The article concluded: "In short, New Haven is a city and all cities have their perils. But with a little street smarts, one can avoid becoming yet another statistic."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/14/yale-student-body-found

[Spark of Truth Inc.]

and cradling it like a baby animal or something

How big are those baby t-rex?  

[Satyagraha]

Creepy email just in...

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Panelists include Dave Jensen, Columnist and Forum Moderator, Science Careers; Sharon Milgram, Ph.D., Director, Office of Intramural Training and Education, National Institutes of Health; Orlando Taylor, Ph.D., Vice Provost for Research, Dean of the Graduate School, and Professor of Communications, Howard University; and Matthew Sammons, Recruiter, Qiagen, Inc.

Questions can be asked live!

---------------------------------

Nah.. no thanks.

[notgonnatakeit]

Bird Flu Connection???

 If you do a google search of Annie Le's Lab Director, Professor ANTON BENNETT  it seems that he got a multimillion dollar grant to study the immune modulator, "MKP1"--  or MKP-1.  Annie may or may not have been working on this line of research on MKP1-- but investigators should verify this important clue.

This chemical-- MKP1--- is very important in regulating the immune response to CYTOKINE STORM.... A key factor in death from H5N1-- i.e.--- the lungs over react to the the virus and drown the victim.    MKP1 may play a role in preventing this type of overreaction....Hence a drug based on it  could conceivably stop mass death from the H5N1 virus....  

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2680050

Here's the key paragraph in the pubmed article link above:  

"Upon challenge with Toll-like receptor ligands MKP-1 knockout mice produced dramatically greater amounts of inflammatory cytokines, developed severe hypotension and multi-organ failure, and exhibited a remarkable increase in mortality. More recent investigations using intact bacteria confirmed these observations and further revealed novel functions of MKP-1 in host defense against bacterial infection. These studies demonstrate that MKP-1 is an essential feedback regulator of the innate immune response, and that it plays a critical role in preventing septic shock and multi-organ dysfunction during pathogenic infection."

Anyway.. the above is just my intuitive hunch...  Annie probably has nothing to do with the MKP1 research at Bennett's  lab... but.. if her research was key... then..... perhaps she was murdered for this reason.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Annie's family and to her fiance-- who must be beyond himself in grief!! What a great loss for the world...

[Mike Philbin]

Hence a drug based on it  could conceivably stop mass death from the H5N1 virus....  

... that would be bad for business.

NWO sarcasm filter disengaged.

[nofakenews]

Anton Bennett
Associate Professor
Joined Yale in 1998

Education:
1988   Liverpool Polytechnic, B.Sc. Biochemistry
1990   New York Medical College, M.S. Pathology
1993   New York Medical College, Ph.D. Pathology
1993   Harvard Medical School, Post-doc
1995   Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Post-doc


Awards:
1991. 1993 Society of Toxicology Graduate Research Award
1992 Bristol-Myers Squibb Graduate Research Award
1993 Society of Toxicology Graduate Student Fellowship Award
1995 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Association Research Fellowship
1998 Swebilius Cancer Research Award
1999 Hellman Family Fellowship
2000 Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Association Young Investigators Award
2001 Burroughs-Wellcome Award for New Investigators in Pharmacology


Research Interests:
Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases (PTPs) in Growth and Development.
The net cellular level of tyrosine phosphorylation is regulated by the intrinsic and opposing activities of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs). Protein tyrosine phosphorylation mediates numerous fundamental physiological events such as cell growth, differentiation, cell movement and cell death. Our laboratory is interested in how PTPs participate in the regulation of these cellular processes. In order to decipher how PTPs regulate mammalian cell signaling we use a broad range of approaches from molecular biology to mouse genetic strategies. Elucidating how PTPs integrate into the signal transduction network in the control of mammalian cell signaling will extend our understanding of the role played by protein tyrosine phosphorylation in normal and abnormal cellular physiology. (more...).

http://info.med.yale.edu/pharm/faculty/index.php?bioID=3

[Mike Philbin]

How big are those baby t-rex?  

I love lateral thinkers.

[sociostudent]

http://www.theallineed.com/medicine/06080104.htm

[Anti_Illuminati]

"WE SHOULD BE EMBRACING THIS TECHNOLOGY, AND FORGET ABOUT THE LITTLE  PRIVACY VIOLATION, ETC."

IF YOU OPPOSE CAMERAS THEN YOU ARE FOR PEOPLE BEING MURDERED ON CAMPUS AND EVERYWHERE ELSE, IF YOU OPPOSE CAMERAS, THEN WE WILL CARRY OUT MORE FALSE FLAGS AND MURDER YOUR KIDS WITH OUR ELITE BLACKOPS UNITS.

YOU NEED TO BE TIED INTO SAIC/LOCKHEED MARTIN'S C4ISR GIG ENABLED CAMERA GRID SO THAT WE CAN TRACK YOU EVEN MORE IN REAL TIME, TO FEED THAT VIDEO DATA TO UAV'S/BLACKWATER/MILCOM C4I PATROL MERCENARIES, AND SELECTIVELY ASSASSINATE YOU IF WE FEEL YOU ARE A THREAT TO WORLD GOVT."

[notgonnatakeit]

From Yale's website:   http://info.med.yale.edu/pharm/news.php?newsID=41

Anton Bennett, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Pharmacology, has been awarded a five-year, $1,685,126 research grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Dr. Bennett's R01 project, entitled, "Mechanisms of Metabolic Control by MKP-1, was scheduled to being July 15, 2007.

This is the very same **** MKP1***** implicated in the CYTOKINE STORM of bird flu....

[AtomicBlythe]

 

[Georgiacopguy]

Sane, you are making the assumption they have not thought about these mundane details. I venture to bet, they have, and far more. I imagine there are five or six full sized white boards brimming with information, points of contact, leads, leads to be followed, dead leads, brains-storming, mind-maps, lab results, lab results pending. I've been on that end of the paradigm, I've done that very kind of work. I know how it works, and while it might be a big ugly machine, there are still core tasks which they do, and they do very well.

you know I bet the fbi are going, f-k it...

the prison planet members  are doing our work for us, let's go grab a brewsky.

I mean really, why are we the ones doing this crapola anyway. this is the thing that really makes me a bit pissed, they could have come up with all this info plus 1,000 other pieces of important info 3 days ago.

national reconnaissance already has all communications in the area for the past year, wtf?

[nofakenews]

Yale pharmacology chair Joseph Schlessinger suppressed site exposing sexual, financial misconduct

The body of Annie Le, formally a pretty Yale pharmacology graduate student was discovered stuffed into pharmacology lab wall cavity last week. Coincidently, last month, before the discovery of the body, WikiLeaks recieved information on a censorship case involving Yale's pharmacology chair, Dr. Joseph Schlessinger.

Dr. Schlessinger, who has not been declared a suspect in the case, although his management of fratenization policies may come under fire, had been sued by his former secretary for sexual harrassment and is alleged to be a notorious womanizer. He had also been successfully sued by the Weitzman Institute for Science in 2006, for misappropriation of research worth $900M dollars in roylties.

Earlier this year or last year, undisclosed individuals, possibly the aggreived parties, registered "josephschlessinger.com", where they placed the court records, transcripts, and links to news articles, all woven together in a morally indignant tone that questioned how Dr. Schlessinger had ever been appointed chair at Yale in the first place.

Rather than suing for libel, which may have been a difficult case to sustain, as most allegations were based on the public record, Dr. Schlessinger took a case to the WIPO, or World Intellectual Property Organization, where he claimed that he owed the commonlaw rights to "josephschlessinger.com".

Although the 1st Amendment has historically been viewed as giving special protection to criticism, in July 2009, WIPO ordered that control of the name be handed over to Dr. Schlessinger.

The attached file is a PDF containing detail that was present on josephschlessinger.com, together with a description of the WIPO case and other matters relating to public posturing by Dr. Schlessinger and his critics

http://88.80.16.63/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://88.80.13.160.nyud.net/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://wikileaks.org/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://wikileaks.eu/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf

[trailhound]

Wow what a chewy thread

Am very curious what she was working on and with whom. The pharmacology tie in is highly suspect.

Also I doubt the real killer was dumb enough to leave bloody clothes belonging to him/her behind. 

Also still havent seen a report that confirms they found all of her body including her skull.

[Dig]

Sane, you are making the assumption they have not thought about these mundane details. I venture to bet, they have, and far more. I imagine there are five or six full sized white boards brimming with information, points of contact, leads, leads to be followed, dead leads, brains-storming, mind-maps, lab results, lab results pending. I've been on that end of the paradigm, I've done that very kind of work. I know how it works, and while it might be a big ugly machine, there are still core tasks which they do, and they do very well.

thanks for the education, the FBI is the best with investigations no doubt. (when they allowed to do them!)

that is why they will no mention 9/11 on the bin laden most wanted website.

[Dig]

Yale pharmacology chair Joseph Schlessinger suppressed site exposing sexual, financial misconduct

The body of Annie Le, formally a pretty Yale pharmacology graduate student was discovered stuffed into pharmacology lab wall cavity last week. Coincidently, last month, before the discovery of the body, WikiLeaks recieved information on a censorship case involving Yale's pharmacology chair, Dr. Joseph Schlessinger.

Dr. Schlessinger, who has not been declared a suspect in the case, although his management of fratenization policies may come under fire, had been sued by his former secretary for sexual harrassment and is alleged to be a notorious womanizer. He had also been successfully sued by the Weitzman Institute for Science in 2006, for misappropriation of research worth $900M dollars in roylties.

Earlier this year or last year, undisclosed individuals, possibly the aggreived parties, registered "josephschlessinger.com", where they placed the court records, transcripts, and links to news articles, all woven together in a morally indignant tone that questioned how Dr. Schlessinger had ever been appointed chair at Yale in the first place.

Rather than suing for libel, which may have been a difficult case to sustain, as most allegations were based on the public record, Dr. Schlessinger took a case to the WIPO, or World Intellectual Property Organization, where he claimed that he owed the commonlaw rights to "josephschlessinger.com".

Although the 1st Amendment has historically been viewed as giving special protection to criticism, in July 2009, WIPO ordered that control of the name be handed over to Dr. Schlessinger.

The attached file is a PDF containing detail that was present on josephschlessinger.com, together with a description of the WIPO case and other matters relating to public posturing by Dr. Schlessinger and his critics

http://88.80.16.63/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://88.80.13.160.nyud.net/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://wikileaks.org/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf
http://wikileaks.eu/leak/joseph-schlessinger-2009.pdf

A Billion Dollar Perverted Criminal is the head of the BIG PHARMA DEPT at Skull and Bones University?!?!?!?!?!

W T F ?

[nofakenews]

A Billion Dollar Perverted Criminal?!?!?!?!?!

W T F ?

I want the pdf but so far none of the links are working.... 

Original
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Yale_pharmacology_chair_Joseph_Schlessinger_suppressed_site_exposing_sexual,_financial_misconduct,_14_Sep_2009

[trailhound]

One thing I know is this story has a lot of angles...somebody said something to the effect of 'hollywood script' earlier in this thread.  Im casting my lot with this story will not get much attention unless there is a 'need for more security' angle to the brunt of the story.  

[Dig]

I want the pdf but so far none of the links are working.... 

Original
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Yale_pharmacology_chair_Joseph_Schlessinger_suppressed_site_exposing_sexual,_financial_misconduct,_14_Sep_2009

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:K2FjNwV8by0J:www.aboutus.org/JosephSchlessinger.com

http://domainnamewire.com/2009/07/29/you-make-the-call-josephschlessinger-com/

[Dig]

The long war
Born in a war-torn mountain village in the former Yugoslavia, Yossi Schlessinger went on to fight other battles, including one against disease.
http://yalemedicine.yale.edu/ym_au06/war.html
By Marc Wortman

On March 26, 1945, in the village of Topusko in the mountains near Zagreb in German-occupied Yugoslavia, Rifka Schlessinger went into labor. Gunfire crackled and artillery exploded outside the battered house where she delivered a baby boy who was given the name Joseph. His parents, Jewish partisans fighting the invaders and local fascists, swaddled the newborn in silk cut from a British soldier’s parachute and grabbed their rifles. With Topusko about to fall to German forces, the family boarded a cart and retreated into the mountains. The parents of Yossi, as he was called, fought on for two more months until the end of the war in Europe.

Their struggles, though, were not over. After Schlessinger’s father was jailed for several months for making a joke at work about Marshal Josip Tito, the Communist leader who had taken control of Yugoslavia, the Schlessingers fled to Israel, where Yossi’s parents had family. But as soon as the Schlessingers disembarked from their ship, they stepped into the war between the new Jewish nation and its Arab neighbors—battles that continue to this day. For their son, a lifetime of war had just begun.

Just surviving such inauspicious and violent beginnings would seem an achievement: Yossi Schlessinger, however, would go on to discern some of the most important mechanisms in the life cycle of the cell and make discoveries about the causes of cancer that have led to some of the most effective new treatments for the disease. Now the William H. Prusoff Professor of Pharmacology, and chair of the department, Schlessinger made one of his frequent trips back to Israel last May, where he maintains close scientific ties. This visit was an occasion for joy. Schlessinger took the stage in a Tel Aviv University auditorium alongside cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Polish journalist and leader in the fight against Communist repression, Adam Michnik. The three were among the recipients who shared three $1 million Dan David Prizes, established in 2001 by David, an inventor of photographic technologies, to honor cultural, scientific, social or technological achievements. Schlessinger’s citation praised him “for his critical role in deciphering a new code for the flow of information from the cell surface into the cell. Dr. Schlessinger epitomizes the scientist that has paved the road from basic research in the laboratory, all the way to the patient.”

Today Schlessinger, who has published almost 500 papers, is regarded as one of the world’s leading cellular biologists and cancer investigators. His studies have helped to open a new understanding of the ways in which signals from growth factor proteins circulating in the blood reach the interior of cells and stimulate them to divide and grow. He has also shown how aberrant cellular signals can lead to cancer and has suggested ways to block them. His discoveries have led to a new field of cancer therapy research that has already produced a new generation of targeted anticancer drugs.

Along the way, Schlessinger also cofounded two biotechnology companies and serves as an advisor to several others—work that has led to one drug that is extending cancer patients’ lives and other agents that are at the testing stage.

Living at the forefront of the scientific world and financially secure beyond the dreams of most academic scientists, Schlessinger seems far removed from the wars that dogged his life from the very first moment. But although he may no longer fear bombs and bullets striking home, the impact of war never goes away.

A scientist-soldier
A few months before Schlessinger left for Israel to accept the Dan David prize, he sat in his sunlight-filled corner office in the new extension of the B-wing of Sterling Hall of Medicine. Behind him the window offered a view of downtown New Haven. He faced out toward the department he leads and whose laboratories and offices fill the new building. He personally hired many of its junior members—including six new professors—as part of a wholesale effort to revamp one of Yale’s flagship programs. In the five years since he arrived at Yale from New York University, he has built new facilities for his own laboratory and brought in 13 new graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Life, it seems, had prepared him for such disruptions and new starts. “Our life,” he recalls of his childhood, “had a lot of dramatic events.” The most tragic occurred even before he was born. Before the war his parents had been married to others and his father had had a daughter. Their spouses and children, however, as well as nearly all of their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers and cousins—80 percent of Schlessinger’s extended family—were shot by Germans and local fascists or herded into gas chambers.

The family’s past with its unredeemable losses could never be pushed far away from the Schlessinger household. The war also left them impoverished. “We were in pretty bad shape,” he says, recalling his family’s arrival in Israel. Although his parents doted on him and his younger brother, their sadness about the past and fears for the future made home, he recalls, “not a very happy environment. It took me many years to figure out how their mood influenced me.”

Schlessinger, who is heavyset and speaks with a thick Israeli accent, can look doleful at times. He talks freely about his difficult childhood, but when discussing the destruction of his parents’ families, a deep sadness comes into his eyes. Perhaps that is why John Mendelsohn, M.D., president of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and co-recipient of the David Prize with Schlessinger, says, “He’s not one to make small talk. He’s interested in serious issues.” Schlessinger, who knows the history of World War II intimately, has visited the towns in the former Yugoslavia where his family and many other Jews once lived, as well as the places where his parents battled the Nazis. He admits to a hair-trigger temper in response to what he perceives as statements that may harbor antisemitism. “I’m very sensitive about these things,” he says.

Growing up in Israel, he never lived far from a battlefield. Like most young Israelis in the new nation’s early years, he was raised to be “a macho fighter.” He entered the military, becoming a captain in the elite Golani Brigade. As part of that force, he preceded the regular infantry to lay or remove landmines, setting or demolishing thousands of explosives in the course of fighting in the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. He claims not to have been scared clearing minefields. “A mine is a task,” he says. “It plays into the scientific mind.” He feels differently about enemy fire. “A sniper shooting at you is not science.”

From these early experiences, Schlessinger learned that survival in a dangerous world depended upon intuition, study and hard work. During World War II his father, captured by the Gestapo, jumped from a moving train to escape certain death in a prison camp. “My father,” Schlessinger recalls, “said the only reason he survived was because he fought. I knew I would also have to make it on my own. I didn’t have safety nets and had to depend on myself.”

Despite the disruptions of serving in Israel’s military reserve and call-ups for wars, he completed a doctorate in biophysics at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science in 1974. He had been fascinated with science since childhood. “I was always interested in addressing fundamental questions,” he said. At the institute he studied the dynamic nature of proteins by measuring the circular polarization of their fluorescence, a preparation seemingly far removed from his later work in cellular biology. After postdoctoral study in the United States, at Cornell and the National Institutes of Health, he focused on how signals were communicated into the interior of the cell.

In the late 1980s, Schlessinger took a sabbatical from his lab in Israel and, after directing a drug research team at a pharmaceutical company, returned to academic life at the medical school at New York University (NYU). He continued to elucidate signaling pathways while directing the Department of Pharmacology, and, for a time, the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine. His laboratory analyzed the mode of action of growth factor receptors on the cell surface and the intracellular signaling pathways that are activated in response to growth factor stimulation. He recognized the critical role played by the components in the signaling pathways in the control of many fundamental cellular processes, including cell proliferation, differentiation and metabolism, as well as cell survival and cell migration—and their role in many diseases caused by dysfunctions in signaling pathways.

At the time, Mendelsohn was on the faculty at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He and Schlessinger would regularly drop in on each other. “He’s fun to talk to,” Mendelsohn says. “He’s a very creative and rigorous scientist who’s willing to try out new ideas. He’s more likely to look at something in a new way.” Mendelsohn also points out that Schlessinger is “a driven person. He’s driven to use science productively. He brings a collaborative spirit and sustained intellectual power to a question and works at it until it’s solved.”

Unlocking the signaling pathway
Irit Lax, Ph.D., a faculty member in pharmacology, has been working for Schlessinger since she was a graduate student in Israel in the early 1980s. They are a couple now. Each has two children from a previous marriage. They spend, says Schlessinger, “99.8 percent” of their time together, which, he adds, “is amazing.” Although he goes to his office seven days a week, he rarely steps into the laboratory any longer. “He reads,” Lax says. “He has a unique capacity to integrate things that at first sight seem not connected. He has an instinct for which direction to go.”

While they were at NYU, Lax recalls Schlessinger saying that once all the signaling pathways have been elucidated, “finding the abnormal, disease-causing pathways will be a trivial matter.” In the early 1980s, Schlessinger and his colleagues showed how epidermal growth factor (EGF) protein binds and activates a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK), an enzyme located on the cell surface. Schlessinger’s laboratory revealed how this coupling launches a cascade of signals that eventually reach the cell nucleus and tell the cell either to divide and grow, or to ignore checkpoints that would normally cause it to die. He then demonstrated that genetically aberrant forms of EGF-receptors and other RTKs can set off the rampant cell growth seen in cancer, including malignant brain tumors and other human cancers.

He recognized that drugs that could inhibit EGF-receptors or other RTKs could also control cancers. And these discoveries did in fact lead to a new class of targeted anticancer drugs—tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The approval in 2001 of the first such inhibitor, Gleevec, a treatment for chronic myelogenous leukemia, was celebrated as the beginning of a new era in cancer treatment. Mendelsohn concurrently produced an antibody that could block the action of EGF-receptors in cancer cells. That antibody was eventually developed into Erbitux (cetuximab), a monoclonal antibody used for treating colorectal cancer. Other related treatments include Herceptin (trastuzumab), a monoclonal antibody previously approved for the treatment of breast cancers for its action against overexpression of the protein ErbB2; and the tyrosine kinase inhibitors Iressa (gefitinib) and Tarceva (erlotinib). Pharmaceutical companies are now discovering and developing scores of kinase inhibitors. Schlessinger also decided to pursue the possibilities for cancer therapy that his findings indicated. “I don’t know any basic scientist who, if he had the opportunity to develop drugs, would ignore it,” he says. “We all want to be Louis Pasteur.”

In 1991 Schlessinger formed the pharmaceutical company Sugen with Axel Ullrich, Ph.D., his longtime collaborator at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany. (The “S” and “U” in the company’s name stood for the two founders’ last names.) The company was acquired by Pharmacia in 1999 in a deal valued at $750 million. Pharmacia was subsequently acquired by Pfizer. The head of Pharmacia at the time of the Sugen acquisition, Fred Hassan, is now chief executive officer and chair of the pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough. He recalls Schlessinger as “the ‘big science’ presence at Sugen. ... He is one of the more insightful science innovators I have encountered.”

That characterization was borne out in January, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved SU11248, sold by Pfizer as Sutent, the first drug derived from work begun at Sugen. Clinical trials of the drug were moved quickly through the FDA approval process because of its obvious effectiveness in treating advanced kidney cancer as well as a stomach cancer known as gastrointestinal stromal tumor, or GIST. Pfizer is also testing Sutent and other drugs based on Sugen’s discoveries as treatments for more common renal cancers, as well as breast and other cancers.

When Schlessinger learned in January that the FDA had approved Sutent, Lax recalls that he shared a bottle of champagne with his lab members and then returned to work. He will receive royalties from a drug projected to bring Pfizer more than $1 billion in annual revenues. “Money doesn’t speak to him,” says Lax, noting that life went on unchanged after Sutent was approved “He didn’t buy three more houses or a sports car. He didn’t slow down his working schedule.” According to Lax, the couple plans to give Yale and other organizations most of the money one day. Schlessinger also intends to give his department part of his half share of the $1 million prize he received in Tel Aviv.

Exploring the darkness
With many biotechnology companies pursuing kinase inhibitors, Schlessinger realized by the end of the 1990s that the same assays were leading to the same drugs with the same limitations. He took a counterintuitive approach and began to study chemical compounds that weakly inhibited RTK and other cell surface receptors. Those potential drugs would not work as cancer therapies themselves. By using structural biology methods, however, investigators could find the targets to which they linked and then “reverse engineer” the target to design drugs that would bind tightly enough to them to inhibit their signals. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a Berkeley, Calif., biotechnology company in late 2000 together with Peter Hirth, Ph.D., the former president of Sugen, and Sung-Ho Kim, Ph.D., a professor from Berkeley. Unusually for an academic scientist, he serves not only as a member of its scientific advisory board but also as chair of the board of directors. The company already has one drug in clinical testing. Its most advanced compound and its first to be tested in humans is a treatment for adult-onset diabetes and other metabolic disorders. Plexxikon also developed a new drug for the treatment of melanomas and colon cancer.

Most successful drugs require 12 to 15 years for discovery, testing and FDA approval at a cost that can reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Sugen required 15 years for its first drug to gain approval. Schlessinger thinks his new company may bring its first drug to market by 2009. “Chances are not high we succeed,” he says, “but if we do, it’s a world record.”

While pursuing industrial ties, Schlessinger is also creating a drug discovery program at Yale. The Center for Drug Discovery, a pilot program with one scientist and two more soon to be hired, will develop agents based on departmental research for so-called “orphan” diseases—those with fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States and which are of little interest to drug companies. He hopes the center will grow to a staff of 20 specialists who will function as “an engineering arm of department scientists.” Their products will be licensed to industry or serve as the basis for new companies to be established by Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research.

Schlessinger has been offered numerous presidencies of drug companies but has rejected them all. “I need the freedom of academia,” he says. “It’s the freedom that makes me work. A true scientist will work harder that way than if you tell him how many hours he has to work.” He worries that the increasing pressure from various funding agencies to move academic research more directly into finding treatments for diseases will undermine the basic scientific research culture that led him to his own breakthrough discoveries. “You’ll never be creative if you know the answer ahead of time. That’s not science,” he says. “The key thing is to let creative people have intellectual fun. I sincerely believe you need to let good people think and do what they want if you want science to succeed. We are always in the darkness exploring a hypothesis. What you think is of no value may prove to be of great value. But science takes time. You need to be patient.”

The tide in support of academic science is moving the other way these days. But fighting for what he believes has never been a question for Schlessinger. “I have tremendous anxiety because of what happened to my parents,” he says. That anxiety has been transferred from the battlefield to the laboratory. “You’re only as good as your last work,” he says. “You have to prove yourself again.” That need drives him to return to work every day. “The anxiety I did not cure myself of is a good thing.” YM

Marc Wortman is a contributing editor of Yale Medicine.

[Dig]

A scientist
soldiers on
Born on a battlefield, a fighter in real wars and the war against cancer
http://www.medicineatyale.org/v3i1_jan_feb_2007/lifelines.html



When Joseph Schlessinger, Ph.D., was born in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia in 1945, gunfire crackled and shells exploded outside. His parents were Jewish partisans fighting the German invaders and local fascists. Three years later, with nearly all their relatives shot by the Germans or murdered in concentration camps, his family immigrated to Israel, only to land in the midst of the first of what would be many wars between the new Jewish nation and its Arab neighbors.

Sitting in his office in the Sterling Hall of Medicine recently, Schlessinger says, with some understatement, “Our life had a lot of dramatic events.”


Just surviving such inauspicious, violent beginnings would seem an achievement. However, Schlessinger—known to friends as “Yossi”—not only lived, he went on to discern some of the most important mechanisms in the life cycle of the cell, discoveries that have led to effective new treatments for cancer.

Along the way, Schlessinger cofounded two biotechnology companies and has served as an advisor to several others—work that led to Sutent, a drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2006 for advanced kidney cancer and for a stomach cancer known as gastrointestinal stromal tumor, or GIST. Sutent, now marketed by Pfizer, and other drugs based on Schlessinger’s discoveries are being tested as treatments for more common renal cancers, as well as breast and other cancers.

Growing up in Israel, Schlessinger never lived far from a battlefield. He joined the Israeli army, becoming a captain, and fought in two wars and served in a third. But despite the disruptions of military reserve duty and call-up for wars, Schlessinger never lost his childhood fascination with science.

“I was always interested in addressing fundamental questions,” he says, and he had a productive career studying intracellular signaling and the role of growth factors circulating in the blood in the life cycle of the cell.

After moving to New York University in the early 1980s, Schlessinger and colleagues showed how epidermal growth factor (EGF) protein binds and activates cell-surface enzymes known as receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs).This crucial coupling launches a cascade of signals that eventually reach the cell nucleus and tell the cell either to divide and grow, or to ignore checkpoints that would normally cause it to die.

Schlessinger’s lab then demonstrated that genetically aberrant EGF receptors and other RTKs can set off the rampant cell growth seen in cancer, including malignant brain tumors and other human cancers.

Schlessinger recognized that drugs that could inhibit RTKs might also control cancers, and the development of tyrosine kinase inhibitors like Sutent heralded the beginning of a new era of highly targeted cancer treatments.

Although he works closely with industry and has been offered presidencies of drug companies numerous times, Schlessinger, now the William H. Prusoff Professor and chair of the Department of Phamacology, has chosen instead to continue his seven-day workweek at Yale. “I need the freedom of academia,” he explains. “It’s the freedom that makes me work.”

He ascribes his drive to his tumultuous origins. “I have tremendous anxiety because of what happened to my parents,” Schlessinger says. That anxiety, forged in war, has been an advantage at the lab bench. “You’re only as good as your last work,” he says. “You have to prove yourself again.”

[Georgiacopguy]

Sarcasm noted. I was just suggesting that perhaps you were being a shade unfair in your assumption that the ppl investigating the murder were taking it callously or less than serious. I mean, yeah, a few ppl on a message board who are guessing if she is carrying a baby into a lab, or an animal BOOKS PPL< ITS A GODDAMN LAB!!!) Then there are the brash assumptions she was murdered due to skull and bones. Based on what? The school she was at? I mean come on people, ya'll are stretching it. And anybody who doesn't is, as usual, met with sarcasm.

I guess as a former investigator that I have a higher standard of proof than you lot.

thanks for the education, the FBI is the best with investigations no doubt. (when they allowed to do them!)

that is why they will no mention 9/11 on the bin laden most wanted website.

[Dig]

An Officer in the Israeli Army, Steals $1 Billion, Chairs big pharma for S&B University, Pervert, Power to control the Internet.

Wow, glad he did not rain sulfur or invoke satellite laser weapons....WHAT THE F*CK! How powerful is this fricking guy?

[nofakenews]

 NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With its already-battered stock price sagging on the news of a sweeping patent-trial defeat Monday, ImClone Systems is hoping its chances will look up with an appeal. But the judge's decision doesn't appear to offer ImClone a lot of hope.

In an unequivocal opinion, U.S. district court judge Naomi Reice Buchwald ruled that a key patent protecting Erbitux, ImClone's lucrative cancer drug and only product, belongs to Israel's Weizmann Institute and not to ImClone (Charts). (Fortune had predicted that the biotech company would lose the trial; see "ImClone's Next Headache.")

The patent in question isn't the one awarded to renowned oncologist and former ImClone director John Mendelsohn for the monoclonal antibody that is the core of Erbitux. (That patent is set to expire next year.) Rather, this one protects the method of using a particular type of monoclonal antibody in concert with a traditional chemotherapy drug. Such combinations account for 85 percent of Erbitux's use, according to analysts.

The judge ruled that nearly 20 years ago, three scientists at Weizmann hatched the notion of combining the antibody with chemotherapy, but a former colleague, Joseph Schlessinger, shanghaied the idea and brought it to a corporate predecessor of Sanofi-Aventis (Charts), which then secretly applied for a patent on it. While the application was pending, Aventis licensed the rights exclusively to ImClone. (Schlessinger denied impropriety at trial and claimed credit for the antibody and the combination.)

The judge declared that ImClone and Aventis have "unclean hands" because they "willfully engaged in a course of conduct that prevented plaintiff from learning about [ImClone and Aventis'] patent application."

One factor that will work against any ImClone appeal: Judge Buchwald's decision turned overwhelmingly on the facts rather than on the law. That's crucial because, in general, the job of an appeals court is to assess the legal decisions made by the judge. Appeals judges are much more reluctant to overturn factual findings.

No equivocating
From the judge's perspective, the balance of proof wasn't even close. As she put it, "The Weizmann scientists have presented documentary evidence substantiating each step of the inventive process, in stark contrast to the dearth of evidence supporting the named inventors' version of events." She went on to describe the plaintiffs' corroborating evidence as "overwhelming," and of "extraordinary breadth."

By contrast, she repeatedly assailed the testimony of Schlessinger, who testified that he'd been nominated for a Nobel Prize and is now the chair of pharmacology at Yale University's School Of Medicine. "Schlessinger's explanation... can most generously be described as strained," Judge Buchwald wrote in her opinion.

Elsewhere, she commented that "This exchange represents one of many instances in which Schlessinger exhibited great reluctance to acknowledge a fact that he perceived to be injurious to the defendants' case." In various places, her opinion dismissed his testimony as "not credible," "contorted," "incredible" and "wholly unsubstantiated by any contemporaneous records." (At deadline, Schlessinger had not replied to a phone call and e-mail requesting comment.)

In a statement, ImClone said it "disagrees with the Court's decision, believes that the... scientists originally named as inventors are the correct inventors of the patent and intends to file an appeal." The statement also noted that ImClone "plans to file a declaratory judgment action... seeking a declaration of patent invalidity and non-infringement..."

Such an action would be bizarre, to say the least. ImClone just spent three years fighting fiercely to keep its right to a key patent - and now it's saying it was fighting for something that's worthless.

At trial, an ImClone executive emphasized the importance of the patent. Such patents, he testified, are "cornerstones for commercial products" and that ImClone "would not have made this kind of investment" in developing Erbitux without the patent. Finally, he testified that the patent could help ImClone block a competing drug from Amgen (Charts).

But that's effectively ancient history, according to ImClone spokesman David Pitts. In his view, the patent was worthy... until the moment that the company lost the case. "It's only valid if it remains with its existing owners," he maintains. Since the Weizmann scientists never applied for a patent, he says, "they have no rights to the patent."

It's hard to see such an argument prevailing. The judge's opinion ordered the United States Patent Office to list the Weizmann scientists as inventors on the existing patent. And as noted, the judge has already ruled that Aventis and ImClone misled the Weizmann scientists about their plans to apply for a patent.

While the next round of skirmishes begins, Weizmann will attempt to license the patent, says its lawyer, Nicholas Groombridge of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. His client would be willing to negotiate with ImClone, he adds. Pitts says ImClone would be willing to discuss buying the rights from Weizmann, but talks may hinge on whether or not ImClone can get exclusive rights to the patent. It's unclear whether other potential licensees will want to license the patent until the appeal is resolved.

A deal with Weizmann would cost ImClone. Citigroup analyst Yaron Werber anticipates that a new license would cost ImClone 2 to 3 percent of its Erbitux revenues. (In a research note after the verdict, Werber, who previously predicted ImClone's would lose its exclusive grip on the patent, added that "we anticipate that this verdict will be upheld in '08 when a final decision is rendered.")

And without the patent, analysts say, ImClone might find it harder to block certain uses of the potential competing drug from Amgen.

In the meantime, with Carl Icahn scooping up ImClone shares and the company's annual meeting scheduled for tomorrow, it's a safe bet that life will stay bumpy for ImClone and its shareholders for the foreseeable future.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/19/news/companies/pluggedin_varchaver.fortune/index.htm

[Dig]

Sarcasm noted. I was just suggesting that perhaps you were being a shade unfair in your assumption that the ppl investigating the murder were taking it callously or less than serious. I mean, yeah, a few ppl on a message board who are guessing if she is carrying a baby into a lab, or an animal BOOKS PPL< ITS A GODDAMN LAB!!!) Then there are the brash assumptions she was murdered due to skull and bones. Based on what? The school she was at? I mean come on people, ya'll are stretching it. And anybody who doesn't is, as usual, met with sarcasm.

I guess as a former investigator that I have a higher standard of proof than you lot.

i was not being sarcastic, j edgar hoover (although being a closet and thus easily blackmailable flamer and a serious racist) caught all the fricking nazis in the country like rockefeller/bush/harriman the FBI does do the best investigating when they are allowed to.

John O'Neill was not allowed to do his job

the FBI would have exposed 9/11 2 years before it happened if they were allowed to.

i am serious about this and believe that they are prevented to doing their job

of course there are bad apples like Larry Potts who gave the order to shoot mrs weaver in the brain while she held her baby and was a co-conspirator to OK City.

anyway their hands are tied and john o'neill identified many saudi and israeli agents that were stopping his investigations.

and take a look at big pharma chair for yale.

hopefully the FBI will be allowed to do their job.

[nofakenews]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Schlessinger_Sexual_Harassment_Lawsuit_Excerpt.gif

(Sworn testimony and deposition transcript excerpt from Mary Beth Garceau Former secretary of Yale University regarding one of many sexual harassment incidents of Dr. Joseph Schlessinger Chair of the Department of Pharmacology of Yale University. )

Yale Professor Faces Sexual Harassment Suit

NEW HAVEN, CT (AP)  -- The former assistant to a Yale professor recognized for his innovative cancer research has filed a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment.

Mary Beth Garceau, who filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court, accuses Yale of failing to address her allegations against Joseph Schlessinger, chairman of the pharmacology department.

An investigator with the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights found reasonable cause to support Garceau's allegations, officials said.

``From the very beginning of plaintiff's employment she was subject to a sexual, offensive and harassing work environment on account of persistent, unbearable and perverted conduct on the part of Dr. Schlessinger,'' the lawsuit states. ``Because Yale had refused to address her concerns, preferring to protect a powerful department head, plaintiff was forced to resign her position at Yale.''

Schlessinger's office referred calls seeking comment to Yale spokesman Tom Conroy, who denied the allegations.

``The university does not believe there was a violation of the law and it will defend against the lawsuit,'' Conroy said, declining further comment because the lawsuit is pending.

Schlessinger has won numerous awards for his cancer research, including a $1 million prize he shared earlier this year.

His pioneering studies paved the way for discovering new families of drugs used to treat many cancers and other diseases caused by dysfunctions in particular enzymes, Yale said at the time. A company he co-founded developed the drug Sutent/SU11248 to treat renal cancers and gastrointestinal stromal tumors that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January.

Garceau, an administrative associate who resigned in 2004, says Schlessinger told a lewd and sexually offensive joke in July 2001, on her first day on the job. She says he discussed his marital infidelity, claiming to have slept with 46 women.

``I don't see anything wrong if we wanted to sleep together,'' Schlessinger told Garceau, the lawsuit states.

Garceau accuses Schlessinger of commenting about her breasts and a graduate student's underwear. She say Schlessinger showed her photos of large-breasted women and a hard-core pornography Web site on his computer.

She alleges Schlessinger showed her a nude photo of a woman he claimed to be his wife.

``At that very moment, another doctor, Schlessinger's wife, appeared and observed him showing plaintiff the picture and started to yell at her husband,'' the lawsuit states.

His wife hung up the phone when contacted for comment Friday.

Garceau said she repeatedly complained to Yale officials about Schlessinger's conduct. Her lawsuit seeks back pay and benefits as well as damages. 

 
http://www.wcbs880.com/pages/137885.php?contentType=4&contentId=251395

[Dig]

one of his "prize" students 8 years ago. Does she fit the profile of the "type" he mentors?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Career Advice  
Singaporeans Abroad: East Meets West Through Science
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2001_11_09/noDOI.15014044134488860077
By Siew Hwa Ong

November 09, 2001

As science is a global endeavour, I believe I will continue to interact with researchers in different regions of the world when I return to Singapore.

Voices of Singaporean Scientists Working Abroad is a new series of articles focusing on young Singaporeans working as scientists in universities, research institutes, or industries outside Singapore. We will bring to you firsthand experiences, thoughts, and aspirations of some of our most promising transnational scientists who are crossing borders to do good science.

In 1995, I began graduate studies on signal transduction by growth factors and receptor tyrosine kinases in the laboratory of Graeme Guy at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) in Singapore, obtaining my PhD in 2000. But from 1997-1998, I was a visiting student in the laboratory of Joseph (Yossi) Schlessinger at the New York University School of Medicine in the U.S. After completing my PhD I went to Canada to work with Tony Pawson at the Mount Sinai Hospital (which is affiliated with the University of Toronto) as a postdoctoral fellow.

My fellowships in New York and Toronto were tremendous experiences--both scientifically inspiring and culturally enriching. In particular, the interactions with my mentors and other scientists were immeasurably important in honing my research abilities, shaping my scientific values and principles, and in fostering my academic and leadership qualities as a contributor to research and development (R&D).

Learning From the Gurus

Several things motivated me to work overseas. Having received most of my education in Singapore, I felt that further training in other countries with larger scientific communities would expand my scientific horizons. Guy, my PhD advisor, had always encouraged me to carry out postdoctoral training abroad. During the early years of my PhD studies, I was very fascinated by the exciting discoveries in the field of signal transduction, in particular how receptor tyrosine kinases are activated to transmit their signals and how protein complexes are formed through defined protein folds (domains) interacting with specific cellular targets. The desire to learn directly from the scientists who made these discoveries and to participate in cutting-edge research in signal transduction provided me with a strong impetus to join these laboratories. I worked toward the goal of earning myself a place in a competitive laboratory in North America after my graduate studies in Singapore.

As it happened, I achieved this goal earlier than expected when, during the third year of my PhD studies, Schlessinger offered me the opportunity to work in his laboratory in New York. I was totally thrilled and was fortunate to receive both approval from the IMCB and sponsorship by the National Science and Technology Board (NSTB; a sponsor of Next Wave Singapore) to spend 1 year in Schlessinger's laboratory as a visiting student.

Schlessinger taught me how to ask meaningful questions in my research, and I have gained much from his insightful directions and strong commitment to the education of his students. In his laboratory, I was fortunate to work with Irit Lax, who is an extremely skilled experimenter and wholly generous in sharing her knowledge. By the time I left Schlessinger's laboratory to finish up my PhD in Singapore, we had obtained many interesting results and were on our way toward publishing some good papers. And I was well on my way to becoming a confident and able scientist.

After completing my PhD, I moved on to Toronto to work with Pawson as a postdoctoral fellow, sponsored by the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) of Singapore. Pawson was quick to realize that I am very keen to understand many biological problems. With his vast knowledge, he recommended several topics and I soon became very interested in cell motility and axon guidance. His insightful advice and strong support of my career have been influential in promoting creative thinking and confidence in exploring new projects. We were quickly able to provide some explanations for several biological questions and are in the process of developing many interesting projects.

I have indeed benefited much from working with great mentors and being accessible to state-of-the-art research facilities at the New York University School of Medicine and the Mount Sinai Hospital. In close vicinity of these two institutions are several other excellent research centers, such as Columbia University and Rockefeller University in New York City; and the Amgen Institute, Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto General Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital, and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, all affiliated to the University of Toronto. The researchers from these institutions collectively constitute a large and vibrant scientific community, with exchange of expertise and information to facilitate efficient collaborative efforts that are critical for competitive research.

Sharing the Knowledge and Experience

Next Wave Singapore had asked me to comment on whether I would return to Singapore in the future. The government of Singapore has identified R&D in biomedical sciences as the fourth pillar of the country's economy. Its strong commitment to develop this new economy is evident from the resources it has pledged to build a first-class infrastructure, to train an elite corps of scientific personnel, and by its close interaction with world experts in academia as well as the biotech industry. Singapore is a small country, and having benefited greatly from government scholarships in all my local and overseas studies, I would be honoured to return and contribute to the drive for excellence in biomedical research. Singapore is making heavy investments in the biomedical sciences, so it is important that the accumulating knowledge and experience be imparted to the scientific community, especially the younger generation. At the same time, it is important that the technology developed be translated to benefits of the providers of the resources, such as improved health care, social security, and job and wealth creation. As science is a global endeavour, I believe I will continue to interact with researchers in different regions of the world when I return to Singapore.

In a broader context, I believe that science is a very important human activity that warrants the support of every society. The application of science has a truly enormous impact on the quality of human life and indeed human civilization. However, it is also a great challenge to ensure that scientific knowledge is not applied in contradiction to the ethical codes of humankind. A case in point is the terrorism events in the United States on 11 September: The invention of aircraft and devices to aid navigation are remarkable human achievements, but they have been used for the destruction of human lives. And the hundred or so years that have elapsed since Pasteur and others discovered microbes in the late 1800s have contributed to the development of antibiotics and have saved numerous human lives. But today, the bacterium Bacillus anthracis that causes the anthrax disease has become a weapon in bioterrorism.

[Dig]

so wait, was he in NY on 9/11? just a harmless question.

[trailhound]

so wait, was he in NY on 9/11? just a harmless question

 lol, but maybe...this story definitely stinks and may have legs as long as the tentacles wrapped around the long legged mack daddy hisbadself

[Dig]

Company: Compugen Ltd (CGEN)
Top Executives at Compugen Ltd
C. Ronald Kahn    Other Corporate Officer
Martin S. Gerstel    Director/President/CEO
Joseph Schlessinger    Other Corporate Officer
Arthur Weiss    Other Corporate Officer
Yossi Cohen    Chief Technology Officer
Dorit Amitay    Other Corporate Officer
Nabil Hannah    Other Corporate Officer
Dov Hershberg    Chairman of the Board/Director
Dikla Czaczkes Axselbrad    CFO
Arie Ovadia    Director

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CGEN Profile

The company engages in drug and diagnostic product candidate discovery and the commercialization of such candidates largely through early stage licensing and co-development agreements.

Compugen Ltd
72 Pinchas Rosen Street
Tel Aviv, 69512
Phone: 972 3 7658585
Fax: 972 3 7658555
Web Site: www.cgen.com
CGEN Wires Headlines

[Dig]

Ong Siew Hwa, Ph.D
Adjunct Assistant Professor


Research Interests:
Drug discovery for cancer by modulation of epigenetic gene regulation


Academic Background:
Ph.D., Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, National University of Singapore, 2000

B.Sc. (Hons), National University of Singapore, 1995

  
Selected Publications:

Soderling SD, KL Binns, GA Wayman, SM Davee, SH Ong, T Pawson and JD Scott (2002) The Wrp component of the WAVE-1 signaling scaffold that terminates Rac-mediated signaling. Nat Cell Biol, 4(12): 970-975.

Ong SH, S Dilworth, I Hauck-Schmalenberger, T Pawson and F Kiefer (2001) The ShcA and Grb2 adaptor proteins mediate endothelial cell transformation and Gab1 tyrosine phosphorylation induced by polyomavirus middle T antigen. EMBO J, 20: 6327-6336.

Wybenga-Groot LE, B Baskin, SH Ong, J Tong, T Pawson and F Sicheri (2001) Structural basis for autoinhibition of the EphB2 receptor tyrosine kinase by the unphosphorylated juxtamembrane region. Cell, 106: 745-757.

Saxton TM, AM Cheng, SH Ong, Y Lu, JC Cross and T Pawson (2001) Gene dosage dependent functions for phosphotyrosine-Grb2 signaling during mammalian tissue morphogenesis. Curr Biol, 11(9): 662.

Ong SH, YR Hadari, N Gotoh, GR Guy, J Schlessinger and I Lax (2001) Stimulation of PI-3 kinase by FGF receptors is mediated by coordinated recruitment of multiple docking proteins. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 98(11): 6074.
 

[Kilika]

Doesn't seem to say, just that Ong worked in his lab in New York in 1998 during her third year, but she left to finish her Ph.D in Singapore in 2000. Don't know if he continued there in NY through 2001. NYU School of Medicine should have when he was there.

[Dig]

NPR: INSIDE JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clues point to inside job in Yale killing
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112824283
by The Associated Press
Enlarge
Associated Press

A missing persons flyer, bearing the name of Annie Le, remains posted on Elm Street in New Haven, Conn., Monday, Sept 14, 2009. Police are hunting for the killer who stuffed a body believed to be that of a Yale University graduate student behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked. Police found the body around 5 p.m. Sunday, on what was to have been 24-year-old Annie Le's wedding day.
Enlarge
Associated Press

A Yale Daily News newspaper box holds the morning issue, with a headline reporting a body was found on campus the previous evening in New Haven, Conn., Monday, Sept 14, 2009. Police are hunting for the killer who stuffed a body believed to be that of a Yale University graduate student behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked. Police found the body around 5 p.m. Sunday, on what was to have been 24-year-old Annie Le's wedding day.
Enlarge
Associated Press

Students make their walk during classes on the campus of Yale university in New Haven, Conn., Monday Sept. 14, 2009. Police are hunting for the killer who stuffed a body believed to be that of Yale University graduate student Annie Le behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked.
Enlarge
Associated Press

A police officer stands at the crime scene at 10 Amistad Street at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Monday Sept. 14, 2009. New Haven Police found a body Sunday at 10 Amistad, where missing Yale graduate student Annie Le was last seen.
Enlarge
Associated Press

Map locates building where a body was found near the Yale University campus
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Associated Press

A Yale University student carries a copy of the school newspaper as he walks in through the New Haven, Conn. campus Monday Sept. 14, 2009. Police are hunting for the killer who stuffed a body believed to be that of a Yale University graduate student behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked.
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Associated Press

A police officer stands at the crime scene at 10 Amistad Street at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Monday Sept. 14, 2009. New Haven Police found a body Sunday at 10 Amistad, the building where missing Yale graduate student Annie Le was last seen.
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Associated Press

This composite photo released by New Haven Police Dept., shows Yale graduate student Annie Le in a video image entering 10 Amistad the morning of her disappearance on the campus at Yale University in new haven, Conn. Sept. 8, 2009. At left is an undated of Le. Police on Sunday said they found what they believe is the body of the graduate student and bride-to-be hidden inside the wall of 10 Amistad, a university building where she was last seen.
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NEW HAVEN, Conn. September 14, 2009, 05:13 pm ET

Clues increasingly pointed to an inside job Monday in the slaying of a Yale graduate student whose body was found stuffed inside a wall five days after she vanished from a heavily secured lab building accessible only to university employees.

Police on Monday sought to calm fears on the Ivy League campus, saying the death of 24-year-old Annie Le was a targeted act. But they declined to name a suspect or say why anyone would want to kill the young woman just days before she was to be married.

"We're not believing it's a random act," said officer Joe Avery, a police spokesman. No one else is in danger, he said, though he would not provide details and denied broadcast reports that police had a suspect in custody.

Yale officials said the building where Le worked would reopen under increased security. Still, some students worried about their safety.

"I'm not walking at nights by myself anymore," said student Natoya Peart, 21, of Jamaica. "It could happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere."

Michael Vishnevetsky, 21, of New York, said he did not feel safe when he made a late trip to his lab Sunday in a different building. "It felt very different than how I usually felt," he said.

Twenty-year-old Muneeb Sultan said he's shocked that a killing could take place in a secure Yale building.

"It's a frightening idea that there's a murderer walking around on campus," said Sultan, a chemistry student.

Police found Le's body about 5 p.m. Sunday, the day she was to marry Columbia University graduate student Jonathan Widawsky, lovingly referred to on her Facebook page as "my best friend." The couple met as undergraduates at the University of Rochester and were eagerly awaiting their planned wedding on Long Island.

Police have said Widawsky is not a suspect and helped detectives in their investigation.

The building where the body was found is part of the university medical school complex about a mile from Yale's main campus. It is accessible to Yale personnel with identification cards. Some 75 video surveillance cameras monitor all doorways.

The body was found in the wall chase — a deep recess where utilities and cables run between floors. An autopsy on Monday confirmed that the remains were those of Le, and authorities formally declared her death a homicide.

Le's laboratory was in the basement of the five-story building. Her office was on the third floor, where authorities found her wallet, keys, money and purse.

Campus officials have said that the security network recorded Le entering the building by swiping her ID card about 10 a.m. Tuesday. She was never seen leaving.

Yale closed the building Monday so police could complete their investigation, according to a message sent to Yale students and staff. Scientists are being allowed in only to conduct essential research projects, and only under the supervision of a police officer.

When the building reopens, there will be extra security both inside and outside, said Yale Secretary and Vice President Linda Lorimer.

Police are analyzing what they call "a large amount" of physical evidence.

A friend said Monday that Le never showed signs of worry about her own personal safety at work, although she did express concerns about crime in New Haven in an article she wrote in February for the medical school's magazine.

"If she was concerned about (it) she would have said something to someone, and they would have known," Jennifer Simpson told CBS' "The Early Show." "And Jon (her fiance) would have known, her family would have known, friends would have known."

Simpson said Le, a pharmacology student from Placerville, Calif., was friendly to everyone.

"She was a people person," Simpson said. "She loved people. She loved life. We just can't imagine anybody wanting to harm Annie."

Another friend, Laurel Griffeath, echoed those thoughts on NBC's "Today" show.

"I can't even imagine someone mad at Annie, much less wanting to hurt her," Griffeath said.

No one answered the door Monday at the Widawskys' gray, ranch-style home in Huntington, N.Y.

"He is a very nice young man," next-door neighbor George Mayer said of Jonathan Widawsky, a 24-year-old seeking his doctorate in physics. "His family, they're all just wonderful people — very, very nice people."

Both families belong to the same temple.

Mayer, whose mother had been invited to the wedding, said he hopes whoever committed the crime "gets justice — that he gets whatever he deserves."

The university planned a candlelight vigil for Monday evening.

The death is the first killing at Yale since the unsolved December 1998 death of Yale student Suzanne Jovin. The popular 21-year-old senior was stabbed 17 times in New Haven's East Rock neighborhood, about 2 miles from campus.

Jovin, of Goettingen, Germany, was last seen alive after returning a university van she had borrowed for a party thrown by a group that pairs Yale students with people with mental disabilities.

Investigators recently sought help from Jovin's classmates, who returned to campus in June for their 10-year reunion. Each received a letter asking for information about the killing.

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Associated Press writers David Collins, Katie Nelson and Ray Henry in New Haven, Susan Haigh in Hartford, Frank Eltman in Huntington, N.Y., and AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

[Kilika]

http://www.yossischlessinger.com/

"Yossie" Schlessinger, Ph.D.

Joseph Schlessinger has been the William H. Prusoff Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine since 2001. He was the Director of the Skirball Institute for Biomolecular Medicine at New York University (NYU) Medical Center from 1998–2001 and the Milton and Helen Kimmelman Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at NYU Medical School from 1990–2001. He was a member of the faculty of the Weizmann Institute from 1978–1991 and the Ruth and Leonard Simon Professor of Cancer Research in the Department of Immunology from 1985–1991. Joseph Schlessinger was a Research Director for Rorer Biotechnology from 1985–1990. He co-founded Sugen, Inc. in 1991 and Plexxikon in 2001. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Plexxikon and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the company.

Joseph Schlessinger received a B.Sc. degree in Chemistry and Physics in 1968 (magna cum laude), and a M.Sc. degree in chemistry (magna cum laude) in 1970 from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in biophysics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1974. From 1974–1976, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Chemistry and Applied Physics at Cornell University, and from 1977–1978, he was a visiting fellow in the immunology branch of the National Cancer Institute of NIH.

Schlessinger received the following awards: Michael Landau Prize (1973), Sara Leady Prize (1980), Hestrin Prize (1983), Levinson Prize (1984), Ciba-Drew Award (1995), Antoine Lacassagne Prize (1995), The Distinguished Service Award of Miami Biotechnology in (1999), Honorary Membership of the Japanese Biochemical Society (1999), Taylor Prize (2000), Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Haifa (2002) and the Dan David Prize (2006).

He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) (1982), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2000), a fellow of the Neuroscience Research Program (2000), a member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001), a member of the European Academy of Sciences (2004), and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (2005). He is serving on the editorial boards of numerous journals including Cell and Molecular Cell.

He has delivered many named lectures including The Fourth Kroc Lecture, Harvard Medical School (1988); E.J. Cohn Lecture, Harvard Medical School (1993); E. Fisher Lecture, University of Geneva (1993); Lamport Lecture, University of Seattle (1993); Harvey Lecture, Rockefeller University (1994); Deans Lecture, Mount Sinai Medical School (1994); Feigen Lecture, Stanford University (1994); Randall Lecture, University of Pennsylvania (1994); Sigma Tau Lecture, Rome, Italy (1995); Lindner Lecture, Weizmann Institute (1996); Burroughs Wellcome Lectures, University of Indiana (1997); Juan March Lecture, Madrid, Spain (1998); Bayer Lecture, Berkeley (1999); Sixth Kroc Lecture, University of Massachusetts (1999); NIH Director Lecture (2000); K.F. Naidorf Lecture, Columbia University (2000); Distinguished Speaker, University of Texas, San Antonio (2000); Severo Ochoa Lecture, Madrid, Spain (2000); First Alton Meister Lecture, Cornell University (2001); Fritz Lipmann Lecture, German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2001); Karl Beyer Lectures, University of Wisconsin, Madison (2003); Asher Rothstein Lecture, The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, Canada (2003), and the Distinguished Lecture on Molecular Targets for Cancer Prevention, AACR, Baltimore, Maryland (2005).

[trailhound]

Police are hunting for the killer who stuffed a body believed to be that of a Yale University graduate student behind a wall in the high-security laboratory building where she worked. Police found the body around 5 p.m. Sunday, on what was to have been 24-year-old Annie Le's wedding day.

 Seems like they would probably know it was her if they have her head. I know thats gross and terrible and this story is making me sick, but the irony is the skull thing still looming. Not to suggest i think ritual is the motive,  her knowledge seems much more likely reason. Then there always is the chance of straight up psychopath type of motive.  

 Need to see what they say about the DNA...