John Holaday, Ceo Of Cancer Treatment Innovator Entremed, Inc. To Present Darden Lecture At UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Nationally recognized researcher and biopharmaceutical executive Dr. John Holaday, whose company EntreMed has made national headlines with its cancer drugs designed to starve tumors by cutting off their blood supply, will return to his alma mater to present the William Darden Lecture in Biological Sciences at The University of Alabama.

Holaday, who is president, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of EntreMed, will detail his company’s pioneering research in cancer treatments in the lecture, “From Test Tubes to the Board Room: A Journey in the Fight against Cancer” March 15 at 7 p.m. in the Lecture Hall (room 127) of the Biology Building on the UA campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Holaday holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from UA and returns to Tuscaloosa to honor his former faculty adviser, Dr. William Darden, professor emeritus of biological sciences at UA and a long-time chair of UA’s department of biological sciences.

Established by Mrs. Ilouise Hill to honor Darden’s 31 years of service to the University, the Darden Lecture brings prominent biologists to campus to address environmental and humanitarian problems and the ways science offers solutions.

“Entremed and alumnus John Holaday have been at the forefront of what has been called the most significant development in cancer treatment in 50 years, angiogenesis inhibition, the process of destroying a tumor by stopping the growth of blood vessels that nurture it,” said Dr. Martha Powell, professor and chair of the department of biological sciences.

“Such a revolutionary and ambitious enterprise is characteristic of Dr. Holaday, who, throughout his career as an internationally recognized research biochemist and teacher, has urged his students to practice ‘seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.’ We are delighted to have him deliver the 2001 Darden Lecture and share his unique experiences with our students,” Powell said.

Holaday and EntreMed are collaborating with noted surgeon turned researcher Dr. Judah Folkman and Children’s Hospital in Boston to develop two naturally occurring substances discovered by Folkman and his team that inhibit tumor growth. Folkman’s groundbreaking discoveries were featured on a Feb. 27 NOVA television program on Public Broadcasting Service and are the subject of the new book, “Dr. Folkman’s War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer by Robert Cooke (Random House, 2001).

After 30 years of searching for ways to stop cancer by chemically cutting off the blood flow to tumors, Folkman discovered two naturally occurring substances, named Angiostatin® and Endostatin™, which inhibited tumor growth. In 1993, Holaday and scientists at EntreMed teamed up with Folkman to develop his discoveries and other groundbreaking cancer treatments.

EntreMed is the first biotechnology company to have Angiostatin, Endostatin and, another substance, 2ME2 in human clinical trials. In pre-clinical studies, the substances were effective at starving tumors in mice and demonstrated the potential not only to inhibit new blood vessels from forming, but also to weaken the existing network of blood vessels feeding primary and metastatic tumors.

Earlier this month EntreMed announced the discovery of a new angiogenesis inhibitor known as Metastatin®, the company’s third discovery in three years. In January, EntreMed announced publication of the first anticancer vaccine targeting a stimulator of angiogenesis, or new blood vessel growth. In October of 1999, the company identified Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) as an angiogenesis inhibitor and published their findings as an Accelerated Discovery in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The Holaday-Folkman collaboration through EntreMed brought together two scientists with professional reputations for looking at old medical problems in new ways. Prior to establishing Entremed, Holaday founded and served as chief of Neuropharmacology in the Division of Neuropsychiatry at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

There he pioneered research on the causes and consequences of traumatic shock in humans and founded the Shock Society, an organization of doctors and researchers who specialize in shock.

The Science Citation Index has listed Holaday among the top 1,000 cited scientists in the world. He holds more than 30 U.S. and foreign patents, has edited or co-edited five books, and authored more than 200 papers and book chapters and 300 scientific abstracts in his four decades of research.

His academic positions include associate professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine and senior lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, and adjunct professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences Program Grant.

The College of Arts and Sciences is The University of Alabama’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state with some 6,000 students and 320 faculty.

Contact

Rebecca Florence, 205/348-8663