Don W. Cleveland

Don W. Cleveland (born 1950 in Waynesville, MO) is an American cancer biologist and neurobiologist.

Cleveland is currently the Department Chair of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, and Head, Laboratory for Cell Biology at the San Diego branch of Ludwig Cancer Research.

Biography Cleveland grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He earned a B.S. in physics in 1972 from New Mexico State University, and graduated as the valedictorian for the College of Arts and Sciences. As a graduate student, Cleveland provided the initial identification and characterization of tau, showing it to have characteristics of a natively unfolded protein. Tau is now recognized to accumulate in Alzheimer's disease and to be the basis for chronic brain injury. He also developed and published a peptide fingerprinting technique that was so popular that it became a citation classic Cleveland did postdoctoral work with William J. Rutter at the University of California, San Francisco from 1978 to 1981. Cleveland was the first to clone tubulin actin and keratin

From 1981 through 1995, Cleveland was on the faculty of the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 1995, he accepted a position at the San Diego Branch of Ludwig Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego. Since 2008, he has been Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

Contributions to Science Cleveland has made pioneering discoveries of the mechanisms of chromosome movement and cell-cycle control during normal cellular division, as well as of the principles of neuronal cell development and their relationship to the defects that contribute to inherited neurodegenerative disease. Cleveland's research looks at the molecular genetics of axonal growth and motor neuron disease and the cell biology of mammalian chromosome movement.

Most recently, his research has achieved a significant breakthrough in treating Huntington's disease, an inherited and degenerative brain disorder for which there is no cure. A one-time injection of a new DNA-based drug treatment - known as ASO (short for antisense oligonucleotide) - blocked the activity of the gene whose mutation causes the disease. A single treatment silenced the mutated gene responsible for the disease, slowing and partially reversing progression of the fatal neurodegenerative disorder in animal models. This drug, called IONIS-HTTRx, was developed by scientists at Ionis Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with partners CHDI Foundation, Roche Pharmaceuticals and academic collaborators at University of California, San Diego. The Phase 3 clinical trial was recently halted for lack of efficacy.

Books Cell and Molecular Biology of the Cytoskeleton: Molecular Mechanisms Controlling Tubulin Synthesis Edited by Jerry W. Shay (Plenum Press, 1986),

With Toni L. Williamson, Mouse Models in the Study of Genetic Neurological Disorders: Mouse Models of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Edited by Brian Popko (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 1999),

With Nicholas G. Theodorakis, Control of Messenger RNA Stability: Translationally Coupled Degradation of Tubulin mRNA Edited by Joel Belasco and George Brawerman (Academic Press, Inc., 1993)

Select honors Elected Member, National Academy of Sciences, 2006 Elected Member, Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2012 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Microbiology, 2006 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009 President, American Society for Cell Biology, 2013 Sheila Essey Prize, American Academy of Neurology, April 1999 Outstanding Scientist Award, Playing to Win for Life Foundation, September 2004 Wings Over Wall Street and MDA Outstanding Scientist, October 2007 2012 Research Award, The Huntington's Disease Society of America Katharine Berkan Judd Award, Memorial Sloan Kettering, 2012 The Ricketts Award, University of Chicago, 2012 The Gerson Distinguished Scholar Award, Univ. of Pittsburgh, 2014 Essey Prize for ALS Research, The ALS Association, 2014 UCSD Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Scholar Mentoring, 2014 Thomas Reuters' 2015 listing of "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds" 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, 2018 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist Awardee, 2018 ASCB E.B. Wilson Medal, 2022