John Reed, M.D., Ph.D.

John Reed earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1986, where he also received his clinical and postdoctoral training. In 1989, Dr. Reed was appointed Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at Penn's School of Medicine, and Assistant Director, Laboratory of Molecular Diagnosis at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He was recruited to the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, in 1992, serving as Deputy Director and then Scientific Director of the Institute's National Cancer Institute-sponsored Cancer Center. Dr. Reed became President and CEO of the Burnham Institute on January 2002. He runs a laboratory of about 50 people devoted to gene discovery, functional genomics, and drug discovery, with emphasis on cancer and selected other diseases.

A prolific author, Dr. Reed has published more articles on apoptosis (when cancer cells "commit suicide") and cell death than any other scientist. During 1997-1999, he ranked first among biomedical researchers worldwide for the impact of his research. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and on the advisory boards of several biopharmaceutical companies. Dr. Reed is the inventor on more than 40 patent applications, including Genasense™, a novel type of cancer therapy that uses synthetic DNA to target a gene necessary for cancer cell survival, now in Phase III clinical trials. Another patent is for diagnostic tests, currently under clinical development, that predict risk of relapse for patients with breast cancer.

"I want to be involved with breastcancer.org so I can continue to provide leadership in developing new therapies and diagnostic tests for women with breast cancer," Dr. Reed says.