Georg F. Weber

Georg Franz Weber (* 1962 in Erlangen, Germany) is a cancer researcher, who has made substantial contributions to the exploration of metastasis by defining the physiologic role of metastasis genes as stress response genes and by discovering the interaction between the molecules osteopontin and CD44. While he continues to address fundamental questions, he is researching new venues of diagnosis and therapy of cancer dissemination.

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Life

Georg F. Weber went to primary and secondary school in Erlangen, Germany. He then attended medical school at the Julius-Maximilians Universitaet Wuerzburg, Germany. In 1988, he graduated and also completed his doctoral thesis. Georg F. Weber came to the U.S. at the turn of the year 1988/1989. He worked at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School from 1990 through 1999. After a stint at Tufts University, 2000-2003, Georg F. Weber moved to the University of Cincinnati, where he is currently on the faculty at the College of Pharmacy and the Cancer Center.

Early in his intellectual life (1981-1991), Georg F. Weber wrote publications on chess and biomechanics. His medical career was initially focused on immunology, in particular on the regulation of host defenses through redox mechanisms. Among various phenomena, he identified signal transduction pathways inside T-lymphocytes that determine cell proliferation, programmed cell death, or immunosenescence.

Georg F. Weber has defined the genetic basis of metastasis formation as aberrant expression or splicing of a unique set of developmentally non-essential genes (stress response genes) that physiologically mediate the homing of immune system cells. Specifically, his laboratory has studied the cytokine osteopontin, which acts as a metastasis gene in multiple malignancies, including breast cancer. Based on the molecular mechanisms of osteopontin induction and function in cancer metastasis, he has established the following paradigms:
1. Osteopontin and variant CD44 interact, and this is essential for metastasis by several types of cancer.
2. Multiple osteopontin splice variants are present in malignant, but not in benign human breast tumor cells.
3. In cancer cells, distinct signal transduction pathways to growth and invasiveness are activated by oncogenes.
4. The expression (activation) of metastasis genes is triggered by cellular stress response programs and is regulated by multi-subunit transcription factor complexes.

Georg F. Weber is the author of multiple monographs, most recently a textbook on molecular oncology.

References

Weber GF. 2007. Molecular Mechanisms of Cancer. Dordrecht (Springer), ISBN-13 978-1-4020-6015-1, ISBN-13 978-1-4020-6016-8.