Owen Witte

Owen Witte M.D. (born May 17, 1949) is an American physician-scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a distinguished professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, founding director of the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, and the UC Regents’ David Saxon Presidential Chair in developmental immunology (1989–present). Witte is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator (1986–present) and a member of the President’s Cancer Panel (2012 to present).

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• Innovations in the life sciences with owen witte
• Stanford medicine alumni awards 2016 owen witte
• Education
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Witte's research has contributed to the understanding of human leukemias, immune disorders and stem cell activity in cancers of the epithelium. His discovery of the tyrosine kinase activity in the ABL1 protein and the demonstration of the BCR-ABL oncoproteins in leukemias was one of the preclinical discoveries that led to the development of Gleevec, the first targeted therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia.

Witte also co-discovered the gene for Bruton's tyrosine kinase, a protein essential for normal B-lymphocyte development that, when mutated, causes the onset of X-linked agammaglobulinemia. This finding influenced the development of targeted drugs like Ibrutinib to treat leukemia and lymphoma.

Witte’s current research focuses on characterizing the stem cells for epithelial cancers of the prostate and other organs in order to define new and more targeted therapies. Using tissue modeling techniques, Witte discovered the prostate stem cell antigen that is up-regulated in prostate cancer, identified the human prostate stem cell population and determined that the protein N-Myc, which is produced by the gene MYCN, leads to the development of aggressive neuroendocrine prostate cancer tumors.