Thomas J. Kelly is an American cancer researcher whose work focuses on the molecular mechanisms of

DNA replication In molecular biology, DNA replication is the biological process of producing two identical replicas of DNA from one original DNA molecule. DNA replication occurs in all life, living organisms, acting as the most essential part of heredity, biolog ...

. Kelly is director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, the basic research arm of the

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK or MSKCC) is a oncology, cancer treatment and research institution in Manhattan in New York City. MSKCC is one of 72 National Cancer Institute–NCI-designated Cancer Center, designated Comprehen ...

. He holds the Center's Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Cancer Research. Before joining Sloan-Kettering in 2002, Kelly was professor and director of the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a Private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Established in 1893 following the construction of the Johns Ho ...

and was the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. Kelly pioneered the study of DNA replication in

eukaryotic The eukaryotes ( ) constitute the Domain (biology), domain of Eukaryota or Eukarya, organisms whose Cell (biology), cells have a membrane-bound cell nucleus, nucleus. All animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, seaweeds, and many unicellular organisms ...

cells by using DNA viruses as model systems. His laboratory developed the first cell-free systems for studying the biochemistry of DNA replication in

human cell The list of human cell types provides an enumeration and description of the various specialized cells found within the human body, highlighting their distinct functions, characteristics, and contributions to overall physiological processes. Cell ...

s, enabling the identification and functional characterization of components of the human replication machinery. In recognition of this work he received the 2004

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize The Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Prize was a $250,000 award given by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation for outstanding oncological research. The prize was awarded annually from 1979 to 2005. Of the winners, 15 out of 37 have gone on to win eit ...

of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation and the 2010

Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize The Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize for Biology or Biochemistry is an annual prize awarded by Columbia University to a researcher or group of researchers who have made an outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemist ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

Career

Kelly earned a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations ...

in 1968 and an

M.D. A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of physician. This ge ...

in 1969. While a postdoctoral fellow with

Hamilton O. Smith Hamilton Othanel Smith (born August 23, 1931 in New York) is an American microbiologist and Nobel laureate. Smith graduated from University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ...

at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine during 1969-70, Kelly determined the DNA sequences recognized by type II restriction enzymes, which subsequently became major tools in recombinant DNA research. In 1970 he moved to the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

as a member of the

United States Public Health Service The United States Public Health Service (USPHS or PHS) is a collection of agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services which manages public health, containing nine out of the department's twelve operating divisions. The assistant s ...

and conducted research on the

DNA viruses A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase. They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and t ...

adenovirus Adenoviruses (members of the family ''Adenoviridae'') are medium-sized (90–100 nm), nonenveloped (without an outer lipid bilayer) viruses with an icosahedral nucleocapsid containing a double-stranded DNA genome. Their name derives from t ...

and

SV40 SV40 is an abbreviation for simian vacuolating virus 40 or simian virus 40, a polyomavirus that is found in both monkeys and humans. Like other polyomaviruses, SV40 is a DNA virus that is found to cause tumors in humans and animals, but most ofte ...

, which cause tumors in animals. He joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1972, where he began to exploit viruses as potentially powerful model systems for exploring the mechanisms of DNA replication in human cells.U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, March 4, 2013 Using proteins derived from human cells, he and his colleagues developed the first cell-free DNA replication systems capable of duplicating the complete genomes of adenovirus and SV40. The SV40 system proved to be a particularly useful system because SV40 relies largely on the cellular replication machinery for the duplication of its genome. Thus, biochemical analysis of the SV40 system made it possible to identify and functionally characterize proteins and enzymes that carry out the duplication of the chromosomal DNA in human cells. In subsequent work Kelly and colleagues have shifted their focus from studying the machinery of DNA replication to the mechanism that controls it. Studying these mechanisms are essential for ensuring the accuracy of DNA replication during the cell cycle in human cells and in fission yeast (

Schizosaccharomyces pombe ''Schizosaccharomyces pombe'', also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically meas ...

), which is highly significant in understanding cancer. Since 2002, Kelly has been the director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, where he has expanded or re-invigorated some of its laboratory research programs. Kelly also led the establishment of the Gerstner Sloan-Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, which provides a novel curriculum in basic and translational cancer biology leading to the Ph.D. degree.

Honors

* Member,

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...

* Member,

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...

* Member,

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

* Fellow,

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

* Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

* Fellow,

American Academy of Microbiology American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

* Member, Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars

Awards

, 2010 *

of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, 2004Thomas Kelly Wins General Motors Cancer Research Award
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Retrieved on March 5, 2013

References

External links

Geoffrey Beene Docs
Retrieved on March 5, 2013
Publications on PubmedMemorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Lab pageNew York Genome Center Launches Innovation Center
August 1, 2012
Interview with Thomas Kelly
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Thomas J. Living people 21st-century American biologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the National Academy of Medicine American cancer researchers Members of the American Philosophical Society 1941 births