We are delighted to announce that Dr. Alessandro Vindigni has been named the Ira Lang Professor of Medicine. Dr. Vindigni is currently a Professor of Medicine and Pathology & Immunology. He is Director of the Center for Genome Integrity at the Washington University School of Medicine and Co-leader of the Section of Molecular Oncology in the Division of Oncology.
Dr. Vindigni is internationally recognized for his work on DNA replication. He leads one of the few laboratories in the world that integrates electron microscopy approaches with genome-wide single-molecule DNA replication assays to study changes in replication fork dynamics at single-molecule resolution. By merging these technologies, he has identified novel pathways through which replication adapts to cancer chemotherapeutics, offering crucial insights into targeting these pathways to enhance chemotherapeutic efficacy.
In a landmark paper published in 2013, he was first to show that RECQ1 is a potent DNA-unwinding enzyme essential for replication fork reversal. This process enables replication forks to change direction when encountering DNA damage. Furthermore, he uncovered significant roles for the breast cancer susceptibility proteins, BRCA1 and BRCA2, in this mechanism, beyond their well-known functions in homologous recombination. Through this work, fork reversal and restart has emerged as a crucial process for safeguarding replication forks stalled by DNA-damaging chemotherapy treatments, which has prompted leading scientists in the field to begin investigating mechanisms controlling this process. Dr. Vindigni continues to make important contributions to our understanding of DNA replication, including recent work identifying a novel pathway that allows replication forks to skip lesions caused by DNA-damaging chemotherapy, leaving a gap of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) between the lesion and the resumption point of DNA synthesis. Dr. Vindigni has an impressive record of continuous extramural funding, which currently includes multiple NIH R01s, ACS, and DOD awards.
Upon his recruitment to Washington University in 2019, Dr. Vindigni was tasked to develop a new Center for Genome Integrity. In short order, he has developed one of the top genome integrity groups in the country. Genome integrity is fundamental to many cancer types, and the specialized expertise of Dr. Vindigni and his group already has had a big impact on the broader cancer research community. Specifically, he has helped other investigators incorporate studies of DNA replication and/or damage into their fundamental studies of cancer biology, resulting in new funding and novel investigator-initiated clinical trials Please join me in congratulating
Dr. Vindigni as the Ira Lang Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine!