Profile of Ira Mellman

摘要

Nestled in an industrial sprawl at the foot of California's San Bruno Mountain, the biotechnology firm Genentech faces the.steel-gray waters of the San Francisco Bay. From his perch in the postcard-worthy campus, National Academy of Sciences member Ira Mellman has presided over a small cadre of cancer biologists for nearly half a decade. When Mellman became vice president of research oncology at the firm in 2007, he was already a household name among the world's leading cell biologists thanks to his discovery of microscopic vesicles called endosomes, which shuttle proteins between compartments within cells. Over the years, he has become something of a scientific decathlete, adding entire dimensions to our understanding of the sorting of proteins in cells, the workings of the immune system, and the drivers of cancer.