Professor Carol L. PrivesFRS is the Da Costa Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.[1]
She is known for her work in the characterisation of p53, an important tumor suppressor protein frequently mutated in cancer.
Prives was educated in Canada, received her BSc and PhD[3] in 1966[4] from McGill University, undertaking research in the lab of Juda Hirsch Quastel.[5] She pursued postdoctoral fellowships at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Weizmann Institute under the mentorship of Professor Michel Revel. after which she became a faculty member at the Weizmann Institute.[1] She received an honorary Doctor of Sciences degree from McGill University, her alma mater, on 29 May 2014 for her contributions to the understanding of p53.[6]
Research and career
In 1995, she was appointed as the Da Costa Professor of Biology at Columbia University.[4] She was the chair of the Department of Biological Sciences from 2000 to 2004.[7]
Her early interest in the SV40 DNA tumour virus as a model for eukaryotic gene expression and oncogenic transformation led her to the study of p53.[8] Since the late 1980s, her lab has focused on the p53 tumour suppressor gene, one of the most frequently mutated in human cancers.