W. Gillies McKenna

Weiss Medallist 2005

W. Gillies McKenna is Professor of Radiation Oncology and Biology at the University of Oxford and the Director of the University of Oxford's new Initiative for Radiation Biology Research, which is jointly funded by Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council and the University of Oxford. The Initiative combines the Medical Research Council's Radiation and Genome Stability Unit and Cancer Research UK's Gray Cancer Institute. Prof. McKenna's research links basic science studies with translational-clinical applications. His research has focussed on effects of radiation on cancer cells and on mechanisms of resistance to radiation with the goal of sensitizing cells to radiation by blocking mechanisms that control cell survival. Specifically he is interested in oncogenically activated signal transduction pathways that exert a radioprotective effect on tumour cells. His group has shown that the EGFR-Ras-PI3K-PTEN-Akt pathway appears to the major radioprotective pathway active in most solid tumours and this pathway then presents targets that could be manipulated in a clinical setting to modify the radiation response. His clinical interests are the treatment of lung cancer, soft tissue sarcomas, skin cancer, head and neck cancer, and melanomas. Professor McKenna was born in Scotland. He received a Bachelor of Science in Zoology at the University of Edinburgh in 1972. He was a member of the Medical Scientist Training Programme at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and received his M.D. and Ph.D. in 1981. His Ph.D. thesis research investigated the cleavage patterns of DNA by mammalian endonucleases. Following an Internship in Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital and a Residency in Radiation Oncology at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. McKenna moved to the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine where he rose to become Chairman and Henry K. Pancoast Professor of Radiation Oncology. In 2005 he moved to his present position. He is the author of over 90 research articles and 40 editorials, reviews and chapters. He has edited a textbook on Clinical Oncology. He was the President of the Radiation Research Society and a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Cancer Institute.

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