Update from the Pellman Laboratory

David Pellman is the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Children’s Hospital, Boston.  He is also Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Chicago.  His internship, residency and fellowship in pediatric oncology were at Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  His postdoctoral fellowship was at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusets Institute of Technology.  His awards include the Damon Runyon Scholar Award, the Stohlman Scholar Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America, and the E. Mead Johnson Award.  The laboratory studies cytoskeletal regulation, the mechanism of mitosis, and the impact of aneuploidy on cancer cell biology.

In 2008 Pellman was named one of 56 new Investigators by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), one of the nation’s largest philanthropies and supporters of biomedical research.

Pellman will receive substantial financial support to pursue innovative research with fewer constraints than is customary with short-term federal funding.

HHMI Investigators are appointed for five-year renewable terms. HHMI, based in Chevy Chase , Md. , invests some $700 million annually in its investigators – about 300 at any one time – who remain in their home institutions. The organization holds nationwide competitions to select scientists who are relatively early in their careers, highly productive, and pursuing groundbreaking research. The current group of HHMI investigators includes 12 Nobel Prize winners and 122 members of the National Academy of Sciences.