Download Kaplan biography - MD Anderson Cancer Center

Biography
David Kaplan is a Senior Scientist and Co-Head of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre at the
Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, a Professor at the University of Toronto, and
holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cancer and Neuroscience. He has made several
discoveries in the signal transduction field, including that of PI-3 kinase (Cell 1987), TrkA as the
Nerve Growth Factor receptor (Nature 1991; Science 1991), SNT/FRS-2 (Molec. Cell. Biol.
1993), Akt as a kinase regulated by PI3-kinase (Cell 1995, Science 1997), and the p53 family
members p63 and p73 as the major proteins regulating death, survival, and degeneration in the
nervous system, and p73 as a gene involved in protecting the brain from Alzheimer’s disease
(Science 2000; Neuron 2005, Neuron 2008). The Kaplan laboratory, joint with the lab of Freda
Miller, has three research focuses: (1) identifying and characterizing the signal transduction
pathways regulating the survival, growth, and regeneration of neurons and neural stem cells, (2)
discovering the molecular basis of neurodegenerative diseases and mental retardation, and (3)
identifying how neuroblastoma arises and metastasizes and developing novel treatments using
stem cells from this cancer (Can. Res. 2007). Dr. Kaplan obtained his BA from Clark University
in Massachusetts, his PhD from Harvard University with Dr. Thomas Roberts in 1987, and
completed his postdoctoral training with Dr. Harold Varmus at the University of California, San
Francisco in 1990. His first laboratory was at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick,
Maryland, and in 1996, moved to Canada where he founded the Brain Tumor Research Centre at
the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University and held the William Feindel Chair in
Neurooncology at McGill University. His laboratory relocated in 2001 to Toronto, where he was
the Head of the Cancer Research Program at the Hospital for Sick Children. Dr. Kaplan is a cofounder of Aegera Therapeutics Inc. in Montreal, Quebec, a company with several drugs in
clinical trials to treat cancer and chemotherapy-induced neuropathies, and Scientific Head of
Neuroscience Canada, a grant-funding and advocacy agency in the area of brain repair. He is a
member of the Canadian Stem Cell Network, where he leads a high throughput screening effort
to identify new drugs to treat cancer using cancer stem cells, with an emphasis on neuroblastoma.