James S. Economou

James S. Economou is an American physician-scientist and university officer. He is currently the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he is also a surgical oncologist and tumor immunologist.^[1][2] As Research Vice Chancellor at UCLA, he promotes academic entrepreneurship, transdisciplinary research, and support of the humanities, arts, and social sciences. The UCLA research enterprise generates almost one billion dollars in extramural funds annually.^[3][4][5]

Early Life and Education

Economou was born in 1951 in Evanston, Illinois and is the grandson of Greek immigrants.^[6] He graduated from New Trier West High School (Northfield, IL), received his BA ('72) and M.D./Ph.D. ('80) from Johns Hopkins University and trained in general surgery at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He joined UCLA faculty in 1986, where he has remained for his entire professional career.^[7]

James is the son of the late Steven Economou, MD, and Kathryn Dotska Economou.^[8]

Career

Economou is the Beaumont Professor of Surgery, Professor of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics and Professor of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA.^[9]

With Arie Belldegrun, he led the first gene therapy trial on the West Coast in the early 1990s and was the founding director of the UCLA Human Gene Medicine Program.^[10] He has served as Chief of the UCLA Division of Surgical Oncology since 2000 and was the 65th President of the Society of Surgical Oncology.^[11][7] He has also served as a founding member of the Los Angeles Zoo Medical Advisory Board and has operated on a male silverback lowlands gorilla with a large parotid tumor, a Borneo orangutan with a laryngeal sac infection and a single-horned Indian white rhinoceros with cancer.^{[12][13][14][15][16]}

Before becoming the senior research officer of UCLA, he served as deputy director of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.^[17] He has chaired two National Cancer Institute Study Sections, has been continuously funded since joining the UCLA faculty, and is on the editorial board of several surgical journals. He received the Stop Cancer Richard Barasch Seed Grant Award (1999),^[18] the James Ewing Medal from the Society of Surgical Oncology (2006), and the Flance-Karl Award from the American Surgical Association (2013).^[19] January 2014, he became President-elect of the American Surgical Association, the nation's oldest and most prestigious surgical society.^[12]

Economou’s research interests in tumor immunology include dendritic cell vaccination, DNA vaccines and adoptive cell therapy using genetically engineered T cells.^[20] Economou has served on the Editorial Boards for the American Journal of Surgery, Surgery, the World Journal of Surgery ^[21] and the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.^[22] He has published more than 100 research articles and book chapters.^[9] As Vice Chancellor of Research at [UCLA] Economou has promoted a culture of entrepreneurship, diversity, and transdisciplinary scholarship and research.^[23][24]

Economou is a co-founder of Kite Pharma,^[25][26] a biotechnology company focused on the design and development of immune-based targeted therapies for multiple cancer indications. On June 6, 2014, Kite Pharma announced it had entered into an exclusive, worldwide license with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).^[27] Kite Pharma had a successful public offering on June 20, 2014.^[28]

Selected Publications

• Jazirehi, A.R., Kurdistani, S.k., Economou, E.S. Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor Sensitizes Apoptosis-Resistant Melanomas to Cytotoxic Human T Lymphocytes through Regulation of TRAIL/DR5 Pathway. J. Immunol. 192:3981-3989, 2014.
• Butterfield, L.H., Jilani, S., Chakraborty, N.G., Bui, L.A., Ribas, A., Dissette, V., Lau, R., Gamradt, S., Glaspy, J.A., McBride, W.H., Mukherji, B., Economou, J.S. Generation of melanoma-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes by dendritic cells transduced with a MART-1 adenovirus. Journal of Immunology 161:5607-5613, 1998.
• Butterfield, L.H., Meng, W., Koh, A., Vollmer, C.M., Ribas, A. Dissette, V.B., Faull, K., Glaspy, J.A., McBride, W.H., and Economou, J.S. T cell responses to HLA-A*0201-restricted peptides derived from human alpha fetoprotein. Journal of Immunology 166: 5300-5308, 2001.
• Ma, C., Cheung, A.F., Chodon, T., Koya, R.C., Wu, Z., Ng, C., Avramis, E., Cochran, A.J., Witte, O.N., Baltimore, D., Chmielowski, B., Economou, J.S., Comin-Anduix, B., Ribas, A., Heath, J. Multifunctional T cell analyses to study response and progression in adoptive cell transfer immunotherapy. Cancer Discovery, 2013, 3:418-429 PMID 23519018

References

External links

• Links to Public Addresses