George Yancopoulos

George D. Yancopoulos, M.D., Ph.D. (born 1959) is an American biomedical scientist who serves as chief scientific officer of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.. ^[1] His work has included study of how nerves regenerate^[2] and how muscles connect to nerves.^[3] He also developed "the most valuable mouse ever made," bred to have immune systems that respond just as a human's would, so that it can be used for testing how the human body might react to various pharmaceuticals and other substances.^[2]

He was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences^[2] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. According to a study by the Institute for Scientific Information, he was the eleventh most highly cited scientist in the world during the 1990s, and the only scientist from the biotechnology industry on the list.

Biography

He spent his early childhood in Woodside, New York. After graduating as valedictorian of both the Bronx High School of Science and Columbia University, Yancopoulos received his MD and PhD degrees in 1987 from Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. Following work in the field of molecular immunology at Columbia University with Dr. Fred Alt, for which he received the Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award,^[2] he left academia in 1989 as a founding scientist for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Yancopoulos has been awarded Columbia University's Stevens Triennial Prize for Research and its University Medal of Excellence for Distinguished Achievement.

Key Papers

• Yancopoulos GD, Alt FW (February 1985). "Developmentally controlled and tissue-specific expression of unrearranged VH gene segments". Cell 40 (2): 271–81. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(85)90141-2. PMID 2578321. 
• Yancopoulos GD, Blackwell TK, Suh H, Hood L, Alt FW (January 1986). "Introduced T cell receptor variable region gene segments recombine in pre-B cells: evidence that B and T cells use a common recombinase". Cell 44 (2): 251–9. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(86)90759-2. PMID 3484682. 
• Maisonpierre PC, Belluscio L, Squinto S, et al. (March 1990). "Neurotrophin-3: a neurotrophic factor related to NGF and BDNF". Science 247 (4949 Pt 1): 1446–51. doi:10.1126/science.2321006. PMID 2321006. 
• Boulton TG, Nye SH, Robbins DJ, et al. (May 1991). "ERKs: a family of protein-serine/threonine kinases that are activated and tyrosine phosphorylated in response to insulin and NGF". Cell 65 (4): 663–75. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(91)90098-J. PMID 2032290. 
• Glass DJ, Nye SH, Hantzopoulos P, et al. (July 1991). "TrkB mediates BDNF/NT-3-dependent survival and proliferation in fibroblasts lacking the low affinity NGF receptor". Cell 66 (2): 405–13. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(91)90629-D. PMID 1649703. 
• Davis S, Aldrich TH, Valenzuela DM, et al. (July 1991). "The receptor for ciliary neurotrophic factor". Science 253 (5015): 59–63. doi:10.1126/science.1648265. PMID 1648265. 
• Ip NY, Stitt TN, Tapley P, et al. (February 1993). "Similarities and differences in the way neurotrophins interact with the Trk receptors in neuronal and nonneuronal cells". Neuron 10 (2): 137–49. doi:10.1016/0896-6273(93)90306-C. PMID 7679912. 
• Davis S, Gale NW, Aldrich TH, et al. (November 1994). "Ligands for EPH-related receptor tyrosine kinases that require membrane attachment or clustering for activity". Science 266 (5186): 816–9. doi:10.1126/science.7973638. PMID 7973638. 
• DeChiara TM, Vejsada R, Poueymirou WT, et al. (October 1995). "Mice lacking the CNTF receptor, unlike mice lacking CNTF, exhibit profound motor neuron deficits at birth". Cell 83 (2): 313–22. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(95)90172-8. PMID 7585948. 
• Economides AN, Ravetch JV, Yancopoulos GD, Stahl N (November 1995). "Designer cytokines: targeting actions to cells of choice". Science 270 (5240): 1351–3. doi:10.1126/science.270.5240.1351. PMID 7481821. 
• DeChiara TM, Bowen DC, Valenzuela DM, et al. (May 1996). "The receptor tyrosine kinase MuSK is required for neuromuscular junction formation in vivo". Cell 85 (4): 501–12. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81251-9. PMID 8653786. 
• Glass DJ, Bowen DC, Stitt TN, et al. (May 1996). "Agrin acts via a MuSK receptor complex". Cell 85 (4): 513–23. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81252-0. PMID 8653787. 
• Davis S, Aldrich TH, Jones PF, et al. (December 1996). "Isolation of angiopoietin-1, a ligand for the TIE2 receptor, by secretion-trap expression cloning". Cell 87 (7): 1161–9. doi:10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81812-7. PMID 8980223. 
• Shrivastava A, Radziejewski C, Campbell E, et al. (December 1997). "An orphan receptor tyrosine kinase family whose members serve as nonintegrin collagen receptors". Molecular Cell 1 (1): 25–34. doi:10.1016/S1097-2765(00)80004-0. PMID 9659900. 
• DeChiara TM, Kimble RB, Poueymirou WT, et al. (March 2000). "Ror2, encoding a receptor-like tyrosine kinase, is required for cartilage and growth plate development". Nature Genetics 24 (3): 271–4. doi:10.1038/73488. PMID 10700181. 
• Holash J, Davis S, Papadopoulos N, et al. (August 2002). "VEGF-Trap: a VEGF blocker with potent antitumor effects". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99 (17): 11393–8. doi:10.1073/pnas.172398299. PMC 123267. PMID 12177445. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=123267. 
• Valenzuela DM, Murphy AJ, Frendewey D, et al. (June 2003). "High-throughput engineering of the mouse genome coupled with high-resolution expression analysis". Nature Biotechnology 21 (6): 652–9. doi:10.1038/nbt822. PMID 12730667. 
• Economides AN, Carpenter LR, Rudge JS, et al. (January 2003). "Cytokine traps: multi-component, high-affinity blockers of cytokine action". Nature Medicine 9 (1): 47–52. doi:10.1038/nm811. PMID 12483208. 

References

1. ^ "Exclusive: Biotech Regeneron on verge of big leagues". Reuters. May 12, 2010. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/05/12/us-regeneron-exclusive-idUKTRE64B37U20100512. Retrieved May 1, 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "George Yancopoulos: Doing Well by Trying to Do Good". Scientific American. October 6, 2008. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=george-yancopoulos-westinghouse. Retrieved May 1, 2011. 
3. ^ "How Nerve Meets Muscle and Begins to Talk". New York Times. May 21, 1996. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/21/science/how-nerve-meets-muscle-and-begins-to-talk.html. Retrieved May 1, 2011.