The Molecular Basis of B Cell Malignancies

NCI’s Center for Cancer Research Grand Rounds Dr. Rafael Casellas was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Geneva, Paris, and Helsinki before coming to the United States where he received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1996. He received a Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology from the Rockefeller University in 2002. There, he worked under Dr. Michel Nussenzweig studying the role of immunoglobulin gene expression and recombination in the establishment of B cell tolerance and peripheral activation. From 2002 to 2003 he did postdoctoral training with David Baltimore at the California Institute of Technology. There Dr. Casellas continued his molecular studies of B cell activation and developed new mouse gene targeting techniques. In January 2004, Dr. Casellas moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Immunogenetics of NIAMS to create the Genomics & Immunity Group, where he is currently a senior investigator. Dr. Casellas is also serving as an adjunct investigator at the Center for Cancer Research, NCI. The major goal of his laboratory is to unravel the molecular mechanisms driving early development and peripheral activation of B lymphocytes. In particular, he is interested in the processes that assemble, diversify, and provide effector functions to antibody receptors, namely V(D)J recombination, somatic hypermutation, and class switching. Another major interest of his laboratory is to understand how deregulation of these reactions leads...
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