Michael J. Difilippantonio, Ph.D., FAC-COR III
Dr. Michael Difilippantonio and his staff are responsible for management and support of activities involving multiple Programs across DCTD. These include Communications, the NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program, and contracts under which the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) conducts scientific research as directed by the division to support the cancer community.
Dr. Difilippantonio joined the DCTD in 2010 as a Program Manager for Therapeutic and Diagnostic Initiatives, and has been a Program Officer since 2020. Following his undergraduate studies in Molecular and Cellular Biology, he spent two years in the laboratory of Dr. David Ward at Yale University applying fluorescence in situ hybridization to characterize unidentifiable markers and chromosomal translocations from patients and mapping DNA clones to their chromosomal locations in the initial stage of the Human Genome Mapping project. He took his interest in DNA rearrangement to graduate school in the laboratory of David Schatz to dissect the mechanism regulating the rearrangement of T-cell receptor and immunoglobulin genes in developing lymphocytes.
Dr. Difilippantonio was a post-doctoral fellow and Staff Scientist in the NCI intramural laboratory of Dr. Thomas Ried where he spent 11 years combining his molecular cytogenetic skills and understanding of DNA recombination to identify recurrent chromosomal rearrangements in cancer, elucidate the role of DNA damage repair pathways in their development, and unravel their consequences on gene expression and tumorigenesis.
Selected Publications
- Difilippantonio MJ*, McMahan CJ*, Eastman QM, Spanopoulou E, Schatz DG: RAG1 Mediates Signal Sequence Recognition and Recruitment of RAG2 in V(D)J Recombination. Cell 87:253-262, 1996. *Contributed equally
- Difilippantonio MJ, Zhu J, Chen HT, Max E, Ried T, and Nussenzweig A: DNA Repair Protein Ku80 Suppresses Chromosomal Aberrations and Malignant Transformation. Nature 404: 510-514, 2000.
- Difilippantonio MJ, Petersen S, Chen HT, Johnson R, Jasin M, Kanaar R, Ried T, Nussenzweig A: Evidence for replicative repair of DNA double-strand breaks leading to oncogenic translocation and gene amplification. J Exp Med 196:469-480, 2002.
- Camps J, Tri Nguyen Q, Padilla-Nash HM, Knutsen T, McNeil NE, Wangsa D, Hummon AB, Grade M, Ried T, Difilippantonio MJ: Integrative genomics reveals mechanisms of copy number alterations responsible for transcriptional deregulation in colorectal cancer. Genes Chromosomes Cancer. 48(11):1002-1017, 2009. Epub Aug 18, 2009.
- Ried T, Difilippantonio MJ: Characterization of Chromosomal Translocations in Mouse Models of Hematological Malignancies Using Spectral Karyotyping, FISH, and Immunocytochemistry. In Genetically Engineered Mice for Cancer Research. Green JE and Ried T. (Eds.). Springer. Chapter 9, pp. 193-207, 2011.
Additional Links to Scientific Publications
Education
- Ph.D., Genetics, Yale University, New Haven, CT
- M.S., Genetics, Yale University, New Haven, CT
- Certificate, Medical Cytogenetic Technology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
- B.S., Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT