{"id":2003,"date":"2009-10-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vermont.salk.edu\/news-release\/salk-scientist-receives-the-sontag-foundations-distinguished-scientist-award\/"},"modified":"2016-01-18T09:34:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T17:34:18","slug":"salk-scientist-receives-the-sontag-foundations-distinguished-scientist-award","status":"publish","type":"disclosure","link":"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/es\/news-release\/salk-scientist-receives-the-sontag-foundations-distinguished-scientist-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Salk scientist receives The Sontag Foundation’s Distinguished Scientist Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

LA JOLLA, CA\u2014Dr. Clodagh O’Shea<\/a>, an assistant professor in the Molecular Cell and Biology Laboratory, has been selected by The Sontag Foundation to receive the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award. She will receive $600,000 over a four-year period to develop new viral therapies to treat invariably fatal glioblastomas and other brain tumors.<\/p>\n

Through the prestigious Distinguished Scientist Awards, The Sontag Foundation recognizes and supports the work of outstanding early career scientists whose research has the potential to generate new knowledge relating to causes, cures or treatment of brain tumors. <\/p>\n

“The Sontag Foundation wants to get people with fresh ideas to think about brain cancer in novel ways,” says O’Shea. “I have not focused on brain cancer until I came to the Salk and breaking into the field would have been very difficult without their support. I am extremely excited to be able to translate the genetic understanding of brain cancer into transformative treatments for patients suffering from this terrible disease. To achieve this we will combine new viral vectors, tools and mouse models in a way that’s never been done before. It’s high risk but it really could change things.”<\/p>\n

O’Shea is an expert on so-called oncolytic viruses that act as tumor-mutation guided missiles, which target tumor cells for their own purposes. When infected cells burst open to release thousands of viral progeny, the next generation of viruses can seek out remaining tumor cells and distant micro-metastases.<\/p>\n

In virtually all glioblastomas the tumor suppressors Rb and p53 are inactivated, allowing her to engineer viruses that home in on brain tumor cells carrying Rb or p53-mutations. Initially, she will create mouse doppelgangers of the human therapeutic viruses to test their tumor selectivity and potency in a new mouse model of glioblastoma, developed in Inder Verma’s lab at the Salk, that faithfully replicates the human disease. If these viruses prove their mettle against mouse tumors, she will then apply the knowledge from these pre-clinical studies to develop new therapies for human brain cancers and other tumors.<\/p>\n

“We have cured cancer in mice many times over,” says O’Shea. “It’s really important not to lose sight of the ultimate goal: to find effective treatments for human patients.”<\/p>\n

Many patients’ brain tumors are inoperable and it is difficult to deliver drugs across the torturous brain tumor blood vessels, which proliferate abnormally to feed the tumor and distant metastases. Therefore, O’Shea will also exploit viruses that naturally infect blood vessels in the brain to identify and develop new therapeutic agents that specifically destroy the tumor blood vessels, starving the tumor to death. <\/p>\n

About Clodagh O’Shea:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born and raised in Cork, Ireland, O’Shea earned her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University College Cork, and her doctorate in Immunology from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF)\/Imperial College London, England. After completing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of California in San Francisco, she was recruited to the Salk Institute in La Jolla in 2007.<\/p>\n

About the Sontag Foundation:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Sontag Foundation, headquartered in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, is a private foundation which funds medical research in the fields of brain cancer and rheumatoid arthritis on a national level and also awards grants to fund programs meeting various social and educational needs of individuals living in Northeast Florida. Since 2003, The Sontag Foundation has awarded over $12.8 million for brain cancer research. For additional information, go to www.sontagfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Acerca del Instituto Salk de Estudios Biol\u00f3gicos:<\/strong><\/p>\n

El Instituto Salk de Estudios Biol\u00f3gicos es una de las instituciones de investigaci\u00f3n b\u00e1sica m\u00e1s destacadas del mundo, donde un cuerpo docente de prestigio internacional investiga cuestiones fundamentales de las ciencias de la vida en un entorno \u00fanico, colaborativo y creativo. Centrados tanto en el descubrimiento como en la formaci\u00f3n de las futuras generaciones de investigadores, los cient\u00edficos del Salk realizan contribuciones revolucionarias a nuestra comprensi\u00f3n del c\u00e1ncer, el envejecimiento, el Alzheimer, la diabetes y las enfermedades cardiovasculares mediante el estudio de la neurociencia, la gen\u00e9tica, la biolog\u00eda celular y vegetal, y otras disciplinas relacionadas.<\/p>\n

\n Los logros del cuerpo docente han sido reconocidos con numerosos galardones, entre los que se incluyen premios Nobel y la pertenencia a la Academia Nacional de Ciencias. Fundado en 1960 por el Dr. Jonas Salk, pionero en la vacuna contra la poliomielitis, el Instituto es una organizaci\u00f3n independiente sin fines de lucro y un hito arquitect\u00f3nico.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","faculty":[104],"disease-research":[],"class_list":["post-2003","disclosure","type-disclosure","status-publish","hentry","faculty-clodagh-oshea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSalk scientist receives The Sontag Foundation's Distinguished Scientist Award - Salk Institute for Biological Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salk.edu\/es\/news-release\/salk-scientist-receives-the-sontag-foundations-distinguished-scientist-award\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_MX\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Salk scientist receives The Sontag Foundation's Distinguished Scientist Award - Salk Institute for Biological Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LA JOLLA, CA\u2014Dr. Clodagh O’Shea, an assistant professor in the Molecular Cell and Biology Laboratory, has been selected by The Sontag Foundation to receive the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award. 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