Important personalitiesBack

Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell (born October 30, 1939, in Los Angeles, California) is former president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and R. Timothy Hunt, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells.

Working in yeast, Hartwell identified the fundamental role of checkpoints in cell cycle control, and CDC genes such as CDC28, which controls the start of the cycle -- the progression through G1.


Education

Hartwell received his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1961. In 1964, he received his PhD in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 1965 to 1968, he worked at the University of California, Irvine as a professor. He moved to the University of Washington in 1968. In a series of experiments from 1970 to 1971, Hartwell discovered the cell division cycle (CDC) genes in baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). These genes regulate the cell cycle and mutations in the genes are involved in some types of cancer.


Awards and honors

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Hartwell has received many awards and honors including the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 1995. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1996, Hartwell joined the faculty of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and in 1997 became its president and director.

In 1998 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, and the Massry Prize from the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California in 2000. On July 9, 2003, Washington Governor Gary Locke awarded the Medal of Merit, the state’s highest honor, to Hartwell. He is also a recipient of the Komen Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction.


Research

His earliest publications focused on temperature sensitive mutations in basic biological processes like DNA, RNA and protein synthesis Subsequent work on cell cycle resulted in an issued US patent. 

Hartwell is the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Canary Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing new technologies for the early detection of cancer. He is also a founding co-chair of the Pacific Health Summit, and a member of its Executive Committee. In September 2009, it was announced that Hartwell will join the faculty of Arizona State University as the Virginia G. Piper Chair of Personalized Medicine and co-director of the Biodesign Institute's new Center for Sustainable Health with Dr. Michael Birt. He is also adjunct faculty at Amrita University in India.




(photo source www.nobelprize.org)