Ming You, MD, PhD, director of the Chemoprevention Program at the Siteman Cancer Center and professor of surgery, has been named the Mary Culver Distinguished Professor in Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Larry J. Shapiro, MD, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, announced the appointment.
Ming You
You is the first to hold the professorship, which was endowed in honor of the late Mary Culver, a prominent St. Louis philanthropist whose 1916 gift to the School of Medicine was recognized by the establishment of the Mary Culver Department of Surgery.
“Mary Culver was a humanitarian who gave much help to people in need in Missouri throughout her life,” Wrighton says. “The School of Medicine was an early beneficiary of her generosity, and her legacy now continues to support the important work done in the Department of Surgery. This endowment will help advance research on prevention of lung cancer, which is by far the most prevalent cause of cancer deaths in the United States.”
You works to identify genes that contribute to lung-cancer susceptibility and investigates compounds that may help prevent lung cancer development or decrease tumor growth. His goal is to find ways to help those at high risk for the disease reduce their chances of developing cancer, an approach known as chemoprevention.
“Ming You is a brilliant scientist with a tremendous drive to make progress in the fight against lung cancer,” Shapiro says. “He has established numerous collaborative research efforts both within and outside of Washington University. Through this work he has made exciting contributions to understanding how lung cancer develops and what might be done to prevent it.”
You earned a medical degree from Peking University College of Medicine in Beijing, China, in 1982. He earned a doctorate in pathology in 1989 at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, Ohio, and was appointed assistant professor of pathology and technical director of the Clinical Molecular Biology Laboratory at the Medical College. In 1998, he advanced to the rank of professor and the following year became research director of the Comprehensive Oncology Center. In 2000, he accepted the position of Barbara J. Bonner Endowed Chair in Lung Cancer Research at The Ohio State University, and in 2002, he joined the faculty of WUSTL’s School of Medicine and the Siteman Cancer Center.
“I am deeply honored to be named the first recipient of the Mary Culver Distinguished Professor in Surgery,” You says. “By helping support research in chemoprevention, her endowment could potentially have far-reaching benefits for many people.”
A major focus of research in You’s laboratory is to evaluate compounds for their ability to prevent or slow the growth of lung cancer. The research team is investigating the effects of natural products such as green tea, ginseng and a Chinese herbal medicine called Antitumor B, which have shown promise as chemopreventive agents. In addition, they are researching the preventative value of other compounds such as bexarotene, a vitamin A analog, and of substances that inhibit specific genes implicated in lung cancer.
“In the cancer-prevention field, you look for drugs that can be given to healthy individuals who have a higher risk of developing cancer,” You says. “So the ideal is to find medications that have no adverse side effects, and that’s why we are so interested in the natural products we are investigating.”
Through genomic studies of human populations, You has helped to identify genetic regions that increase susceptibility to lung cancer. His research in mice has also pinpointed genes that increase the risk of the disease, and he is investigating the molecular mechanisms involved in lung cancer growth and development.
You is an editor of several major scientific journals dealing with cancer or cancer prevention research. He is an author of more than 165 scientific articles, and he has been an invited speaker for more than 110 presentations on the subject of lung cancer and cancer prevention. He has been a member of numerous scientific committees and now serves in the Chemo/Dietary Prevention Study Section (CDP) at the National Institutes of Health and on the board of scientific counselors for the National Cancer Institute.
Mary Culver was born in 1841 in Champaign County, Ohio. She and her husband, L. L. Culver, came to St. Louis in 1876, where he became part owner of the Majestic Co., a stove manufacturing business. Among Mary Culver’s many philanthropic commitments to organizations that served minority and disadvantaged populations was the creation of The Blind Girls’ Home (now the Mary Culver Home, located in Kirkwood, Mo.). She also played a major role in the development of Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Mo., in the early years of the 20th century.
Washington University School of Medicine’s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked third in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
Siteman Cancer Center is the only federally designated Comprehensive Cancer Center within a 240-mile radius of St. Louis. Siteman Cancer Center is composed of the combined cancer research and treatment programs of Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. Siteman has satellite locations in West County and St. Peters, in addition to its full-service facility at Washington University Medical Center on South Kingshighway.