Speaker

Randy Kaufman, PHD

Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute
Randy Kaufman, PHD

Biography

Dr. Randal Kaufman previously served as professor of Biological Chemistry and Internal Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Research Institute investigator at the University of Michigan Medical School. He received his PhD in pharmacology from Stanford University, where he studied gene amplification as a mechanism by which cells become resistant to anticancer agents. He was a Helen Hay Whitney fellow with Nobel Laureate Dr. Phillip Sharp at the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), where he developed gene transfer technologies based on gene amplification and expression in mammalian cells. He did his postdoctoral work at the Center for Cancer Research at M.I.T. In the 1980s, Dr. Kaufman's experience with gene transfer and engineering led him to become a founding scientist at Genetics Institute Inc., where he engineered mammalian cells for high-level expression of therapeutic proteins, such as clotting factors that are now used to treat individuals with hemophilia. Dr. Kaufman joined Sanford Burnham Prebys in 2011.