Ramon Parsons
Cancer geneticist whose Columbia group identified the PTEN tumour suppressor gene in 1997, in parallel with another team; his lab then studied what goes wrong downstream of PTEN loss, including mTOR
Director, Tisch Cancer Institute & Mount Sinai Cancer; Ward-Coleman Professor and Chair of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (since 2013) · Avon Professor of Pathology and Medicine, Columbia University · Postdoc with Bert Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins · MD, PhD, Stony Brook (1992) · Member, National Academy of Medicine (2017)
Ramon Parsons is the senior author of POD2001, done at Columbia University with Katrina Podsypanina as first author. In Pten+/- mice, an mTOR inhibitor reduced tumour growth and normalised p70 S6 kinase activity without changing Akt, which pointed to S6K and possibly other mTOR targets as contributors to tumours caused by PTEN loss. It was published in the same PNAS issue as NES2001 from Charles Sawyers' lab, and the two papers reached matching conclusions by different routes.
Parsons studied at Columbia, earned an MD and PhD at Stony Brook (1992) and trained as a postdoc with Bert Vogelstein at Johns Hopkins. At Columbia his group reported PTEN as a gene mutated in brain, breast and prostate cancer (1997). He moved to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2013 as chair of Oncological Sciences and now directs the Tisch Cancer Institute. His lab works on PTEN regulation, PI3K pathway changes in cancer, and breast cancer progression.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | A | An inhibitor of mTOR reduces neoplasia and normalizes p70/S6 kinase activity in Pten+/- mice POD2001 Senior author: mTOR inhibition reduces neoplasia and S6 kinase activity in Pten+/- mice without affecting Akt. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Ramon Parsons.
- Charles L. Sawyers Physician-scientist known for targeted cancer drugs (ABL inhibitors in leukaemia, antiandrogens in prostate cancer); his UCLA lab helped show that PTEN-deficient tumour cells depend more on mTOR
- John Blenis Showed early on that rapamycin blocks S6 kinase, then worked out how mTORC1 drives cell growth through its two main translation targets, S6K1 and 4E-BP1. His lab also found, in parallel with the Sabatini lab, that mTORC1 phosphorylates Grb10, a feedback brake on insulin signalling
- Katrina Podsypanina First author of the study showing that an mTOR inhibitor reduced tumour growth and S6 kinase activity in Pten+/- mice; later moved from cancer genetics to tumour immunology
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