David Baltimore

David Baltimore (b. March 7, 1938) is an American biologist and one of the recipients of the 1975 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he was the president from 1997 to 2006. He is also currently the president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Baltimore was born in New York City. A graduate of Swarthmore College (BA, 1960), he received his Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1964. At the age of 37, while on the MIT faculty, he received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of reverse transcriptase, which transcribes RNA into DNA. This work upset what was until the early 1970s a widely held dogma: that DNA led to RNA, which in turn led solely to proteins. Reverse transcriptase is an important factor in the reproduction of retroviruses such as HIV.

While at MIT, Baltimore established the Whitehead Institute. He was an organizer of the Asilomar conference on recombinant DNA in 1975.

Baltimore has profound influence on national policy in matters concerning recombinant DNA research and the AIDS epidemic. Dr. Baltimore is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[1]. He is a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica.

Current Labwork

Baltimore's site describes his current work: "Our laboratory is involved in three major directions of research. The first is study of the remarkable range of activity of the NF-kB transcription factor. It activates perhaps 1000 genes in response to a wide range of stimuli. It has different physiologic roles in different cells. How one factor can be so varied in its activity is the puzzle that interests us. We are studying this at the level of DNA-protein interactions as well as signal transduction pathways. We are studying its role in normal cells and in diseases like cancer and AIDS.

The second line of work involves using gene transfer methods to reprogram the immune system. We have shown that we can design a retrovirus vector able to express cDNA’s encoding both chains of the T cell receptor (TCR) protein. When mouse hematopoietic stem cells are transduced with the vector and then inoculated into irradiated mice, many of the resulting T cells express the TCR encoded by the vector. We have shown that when the TCR is able to recognize specific peptides from a tumor antigen, the animal can reject tumors carrying the antigen. We plan to extend these studies to human tumor antigens with the goal of developing a human therapy. We are also studying whether the same strategy will work for antibody gene expression by B cells with a goal of devising a new therapy for AIDS.

The third goal of the laboratory is to understand the role of the Ryk protein as a co-receptor for Wnt proteins. We have shown that Wnt interacts with both Ryk and Frizzled surface receptor proteins in a tripartite complex. We are now investigating the pathways activated by Ryk and the role of Ryk in neuronal guidance."

Imanishi-Kari Case

For most people outside of science, Baltimore is best known for his role in an affair of alleged scientific misconduct. In 1986, Baltimore co-authored a scientific paper on immunology with Thereza Imanishi-Kari and four others [2]. A researcher in Imanishi-Kari's lab, Margot O'Toole, who was not an author, could not reproduce some of the experiments in the paper and discovered laboratory data that contradicted the published data. O'Toole then challenged the authors to explain the discrepancies and ultimately accused Imanishi-Kari of fabricating data in a cover-up. Baltimore initially refused to retract the paper, although he did later with three co-authors [3] (Imanishi-Kari and Moema H. Reis did not sign the retraction). Although O'Toole soon dropped her challenge, Walter W. Stewart and Ned Feder, National Institutes of Health (NIH; Health & Human Services (HHS), U.S. Federal Government) scientists, picked it up. Because they and the authors also could not resolve the challenge, NIH, which funded the contested paper's research, began investigating. It was then also taken up in the United States Congress by Representative John Dingell (D-MI) who aggressively pursued it, eventually calling in US Secret Service (USSS; US Treasury) document examiners. Based mainly on USSS forensics findings, NIH's fraud unit, then called the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), accused Dr. Imanishi-Kari in March 1991 of falsifying and fabricating data. It also harshly criticized Baltimore for failing to embrace O'Toole's challenge.

During the ensuing controversy/uproar (including extensive press coverage) the Rockefeller University faculty pressured President Baltimore to resign December 1991, after only 1.5 years in the office (term began 1 July 1990). An extensive file/analysis of the case assembled by Yale University mathematician Serge Lang entitled, "Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case" was published in the journal, Ethics & Behavior Spring 1993. 26 October 1994 OSI's successor, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI, HHS) reviewed the case and found Imanishi-Kari guilty on 19 counts of research misconduct; it recommended she be barred from receiving HHS research grants for 10 years. In June 1996, a HHS appeals panel reviewed the case again and dismissed all charges. Neither OSI nor ORI ever accused Baltimore of research misconduct. Baltimore has been both admired for standing behind a junior faculty member at great personal and professional cost and criticized for failing to be a responsible scientist by many in the scientific community. Daniel Kevles' book, The Baltimore Case: A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character recounts the affair but is sympathetic to Baltimore and Imanishi-Kari. For a different perspective, see Lang's study (updated and reprinted in his book, "Challenges" (New York: Springer-Verlag; 1997)) and/or Horace Freeland Judson's book, "The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science" (Orlando: Harcourt; 2004).

Despite the controversy, President William Jefferson Clinton awarded Baltimore the National Medal of Science in 1999 for his numerous contributions to the scientific world.

van Parijs Case

A former postdoctoral trainee in Baltimore's laboratory, Luk van Parijs, was fired from his associate professor of biology position by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in October 2005. According to MIT, Van Parijs confessed to scientific misconduct. A 26 January 2006 story in Nature entitled, "Bad data fail to halt patents" discusses suspicious data in a patent application filed by Baltimore and Van Parijs. According to Nature, Baltimore admitted that there was at least one error in the patent application and he, "said he would correct it". Baltimore was quoted as saying, “The patents are fine, and we’re proceeding".

See also

• Baltimore classification

• 73079 Davidbaltimore

External links

• Baltimore bio at Caltech

• Baltimore Laboratory at Caltech

• Initial report of ribonuclease-dependent DNA polymerase activity: "RNA-dependent DNA polymerase in virions of RNA tumour viruses" by D. Baltimore in Nature (1970) volume 226, pages 1209-1211. Template:Entrez Pubmed

• Department of Health and Human Services ruling on Thereza Imanishi-Kari case (June 21, 1996).