12th Annual UMN-Mayo Lectures in Virology and Gene Therapy - Dr. Matthew Weitzman
Matthew Weitzman graduated with a degree in genetics from the University of Leeds, UK (1987) and obtained a PhD in molecular virology from Oxford Polytechnic and the NERC Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology in Oxford, UK (1991). He did postdoctoral work on a Fogarty Visiting Fellowship at the NIH (1991-1993) and as a Cystic Fibrosis Postdoctoral Fellow (1994-1995) in the Institute for Human Gene Therapy, at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1997 he moved to the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California where he established a productive and well-funded lab. In 2011 he moved to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and established his lab in Cancer Pathobiology. He currently holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Pediatrics, and Microbiology within the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The research in the Weitzman lab bridges the fields of virology, DNA repair, and gene therapy. The lab studies virus-host interactions, using human DNA viruses as model systems to investigate fundamental cellular processes. One of the important questions being addressed deals with how the human genome maintains integrity in the face of viral genetic assault. Work from the lab demonstrated that viral genomes pose a direct threat to the host genome, and that the cellular apparatus that resolves DNA damage also acts as a defense against this viral assault. The lab pioneered the study of the cellular damage sensing apparatus as an intrinsic defense to virus infection. Using an integrated experimental approach that combines biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics and cell biology the lab explores the role of the DNA damage machinery during infection with multiple viruses. This work has opened up a new area in the biology of virus-host interactions and also provided a platform for interrogating cellular pathways involved in recognition and processing of DNA damage.