Stephen J. Weiss
After completing his B.A., M.D. and medical internship at Ohio State University and Washington University, Dr. Weiss was recruited to the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Michigan. In 1982, he was promoted to the rank of Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology and in 1988, assumed the rank of full-Professor. In 1991, he was named as the first recipient of the Upjohn Professorship, a title that he has held for the last 15 years. Most recently, Dr. Weiss served as the Director of the Molecular Mechanisms of Disease Program at the University of Michigan before joining the Life Sciences Institute as a Research Professor in 2006. Dr. Weiss has received numerous honors and awards in the course of his academic career. In 1984, he was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (the Young Turks), and at the age of 31 was one of the youngest electees in the Society’s 80 year history. Dr. Weiss is also a member of the prestigious Association of American Physicians, and in 2001 was selected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Consistent with his stature in the field, he has served on numerous committees at the National Institutes of Health as well as the National Cancer Institute, and was named the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 1997. In addition, Dr. Weiss was a co-founder of Eos Biotechnology, a start-up biotechnology firm that was acquired by PDL Biopharma, Inc. in 2003. Dr. Weiss’ research efforts have long focused on the mechanisms used by white blood cells, endothelial cells and cancer cells to remodel tissue structure during events ranging from inflammatory disease and angiogenesis to cancer. His highly cited works on the role of metalloproteinases in regulating these pathologic events have appeared consistently in top-ranked journals such as Science, Nature, Genes & Development, the Journal of Cell Biology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Cell. Most recently, Dr. Weiss’ characterization of a family of membrane-anchored enzymes, the MT-MMPs, lends credence to his novel hypothesis that these proteases act as master switches in controlling key functions of normal and neoplastic cell behavior in vivo. .
