Prof. Benjamin G. Neel Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, USA

Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, USA Dr. Neel received his Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Dr. William S. Hayward, and his MD degree at Cornell University Medical College. He subsequently completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston,... read moreand a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Raymond Erikson at Harvard University. He then started his own group at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, where he is now Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cancer Biology Program. Dr. Neel studies cellular signaling, with a particular emphasis on the protein-tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs). His group focuses mainly on three members of the PTP superfamily, PTP1B, Shp1 and Shp2, all of which were initially identified in his laboratory. His groups overarching interest is in understanding the physiological relevance of signaling events regulated by PTPs, and how these normal mechanisms are deregulated in disease. There is a particularly heavy emphasis on mouse modeling, and current work includes studies of models of human disease-associated Shp2 mutations that cause Noonan Syndrome, LEOPARD syndrome, and leukemia, and models of cell/tissue-specific deficiency of Shp1 and PTP1B.