James Curtin

"This course gave me a good overview of recent advances in the fields of molecular biomarkers for cancer, cancer immunology, cancer stem cells, and bioinformatics tools to mine cancer databases for novel targets."

James Curtin, Ph.D.
Lecturer in Medical Biochemistry
Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT)

In August 2008, Dr. James Curtin attended the NCI Molecular Prevention Course, where he studied how various molecular techniques are applied to molecular epidemiology, human biomarkers, cancer immunology, and cancer stem cell research.

Dr. Curtin graduated from the Department of Biochemistry, University College Cork, Ireland with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2003. The title of his thesis was "The Role of Stress Activated Protein Kinases in Prostate Cancer". After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Curtin spent just over 4 years in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology in UCLA at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the design and development of an immunotherapy for the treatment of brain cancer. This therapy is currently being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials with human patients.

Dr. Curtin is now a Lecturer in Medical Biochemistry at Dublin Institute of Technology. His research interests encompass gene therapy, cancer research, and immunology; he is primarily interested in understanding how the immune system and cancer cells interact and in developing gene therapeutic approaches, such as RNA interference and regulatable gene expression in cancer cells and in immune cells with therapeutic intent. Dr. Curtin has published 30 peer-reviewed manuscripts in leading international scientific journals and has won several awards, most recently the Malaniak Award for his research in UCLA/Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Upon his return to the School of Biological Sciences at DIT, Dr. Curtin will apply the techniques discussed during the NCI Molecular Prevention Course to his current and future research projects. In particular, Dr. Curtin hopes to utilize NCI's cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) to identify novel gene targets that he will then modulate using gene therapy with therapeutic intent to improve survival of patients with cancer.

Papers published by Dr. Curtin include:

• Curtin JF et al. Regulated expression of adenoviral vectors-based gene therapies: therapeutic expression of toxins and immune-modulators. Methods Mol Biol. 2008;434:239-66.
  
• Curtin JF et al. Treg depletion inhibits efficacy of cancer immunotherapy: implications for clinical trials. PLoS ONE. 2008 Apr 23;3(4):e1983.
• Curtin JF et al. Turning the gene tap off; implications of regulating gene expression for cancer therapeutics. Mol Cancer Ther. 2008 Mar;7(3):439-48. Review.
• Curtin JF et al. Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand recruits plasmacytoid dendritic cells to the brain. J Immunol. 2006 Mar 15;176(6):3566-77.
• Curtin JF et al. Combining cytotoxic and immune-mediated gene therapy to treat brain tumors. Curr Top Med Chem. 2005;5(12):1151-70. Review.