Scott W. Lowe

Scott William Lowe (born October 4, 1963) is Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is recognized for his research on the tumor suppressor gene, p53, which is mutated in nearly half of cancers.

Early life and education Lowe was born in 1963 in Racine, Wisconsin. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in chemical engineering in 1982 before changing his major to biology. He worked for two years after graduation as a lab technician in a hypercholesterolemia lab. Lowe entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with an interest in oncogene cooperation in carcinogenesis, and went on to earn his PhD studying the role of p53 in cancer development. He stayed at MIT as a postdoctoral fellow with David Housman and Tyler Jacks. He moved from MIT to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, starting his own laboratory as a Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Fellow in 1995 and continuing his work on p53. A key outcome of this research was the discovery of a process known as oncogene-induced senescence, which is now a well-established tumor suppressive program. In collaboration with Gregory Hannon and Stephen Elledge, he has made extensive use of RNA interference to study the roles of tumor suppressor genes. He is also known for using genome-editing tools such as CRISPR to create valuable mouse models of different cancers. He moved to Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2011 to lead the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute, where he discovered mechanisms whereby senescence inducing therapies promote cancer cell immune surveillance. In 2015, Lowe continued his use of RNAi to study the tumor suppressor APC in colorectal cancer. In 2017, Dr. Lowe was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Awards

AACR Outstanding Investigator Award Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research Alfred G. Knudson Award for Excellence in Cancer Genetics, National Cancer Institute Colin Thomson Memorial Medal AACR-NFCR Professorship in Basic Cancer Research Kunio Yagi Medal, International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology National Academy of Sciences, Member National Academy of Medicine, Member Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research in 2005.

Works

2017—Lowe's Inaugural Article as a member of the National Academy of Sciences: 1993—Lowe's own favorite publications: -and-