Demetrios Spandidos

Demetrios A. Spandidos is a Greek virologist and cancer researcher. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Crete where he was professor of virology from 1989 till 2015. He is also the founder of Spandidos Publications and the editor-in-chief of all eight of its journals.

Demetrios A. Spandidos
Δημήτριος Σπαντίδος
Born (1947-04-13) 13 April 1947
Agios Konstantinos, Sparta, Greece
NationalityGreek
CitizenshipGreek
Alma materAristotle University of Thessaloniki, McGill University, University of Glasgow
Spouse(s)Panayota D. Krempeniou
ChildrenTwo
Scientific career
FieldsOncology, virology
InstitutionsUniversity of Crete
ThesisGenetics and transcription of reovirus (1976)
Websitewww.demetriosspandidos.com

Education

Spandidos received his bachelor's degree from the University of Thessaloniki in 1971, his PhD from McGill University in 1976, and a DSc from the University of Glasgow in 1989.[1]

Career

From 1976 to 1978, Spandidos worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, working in the laboratory of Louis Siminovitch.[2] In 1978, Spandidos gave a presentation to a Dana Farber Cancer Institute seminar. In this presentation, Spandidos claimed to have proven that oncogenes were the root cause of all cancers. Robert Weinberg, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was in the audience when Spandidos gave this talk, and later recalled that he had devised what he called "exactly the same" strategy to identify oncogenes in human tumors not long before Spandidos' talk.[3] Spandidos had published these findings in Cell a month prior to Weinberg having his idea, which, like Spandidos' paper, related to transfectable oncogenes.[4]

Spandidos was forced to end his position at the University of Toronto in Siminovitch's laboratory due to accusations of fraud.[5] Two postdocs in Siminovitch lab were unable to reproduce Spandidos' findings, and Spandidos did not present the raw data proving that he was innocent.[5] However, Siminovitch did not initiate an independent investigation and the accusations have never been officially confirmed.[5]

From 1978 to 1979, Spandidos was an assistant professor at the Hellenic Anticancer Institute in Athens, Greece.[2] From 1979 to 1989, Spandidos worked at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, where he studied the Ras oncogene.[2][6]

In 1992, Spandidos established Spandidos Publications, a publisher of scientific journals. It currently publishes eight journals: International Journal of Molecular Medicine, International Journal of Oncology, Molecular Medicine Reports, Oncology Reports, Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine, Oncology Letters, Biomedical Reports, and Molecular and Clinical Oncology. Spandidos is the editor-in-chief of all of them.[7]

Special issues in honor of Spandidos were published in Critical Reviews in Oncogenesis in 2017[8][9] and in Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine in 2019.[10]

References
  1. "Spandidos Lab Home Page". University of Crete.
  2. Spandidos, Demetrios A. (November 2004). "The Cancer Story" (PDF). Cancer Biology and Therapy. 3 (11): 1184–1186. doi:10.4161/cbt.3.11.1260. PMID 15539942.
  3. Warsh, David (7 October 1996). "Nobel Contender Called Out On Strikes Not Even His Own". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  4. Angier, Natalie (2014). Natural Obsessions: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 79. ISBN 9780544358348.
  5. Angier, Natalie (2014). Natural Obsessions: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 85–89. ISBN 9780544358348.
  6. Bartels, Ditta (July 1987). "Escape of the Cancer Genes?". New Scientist (1571): 53.
  7. "About Spandidos Publications". Spandidos Publications. Retrieved 7 January 2015.
  8. Bonavida, Benjamin (July 2017). "In Honor of Professor Demetrios A. Spandidos". Critical Reviews in Oncogenesis. 22 (3–4): 3–4. doi:10.1615/CritRevOncog.2018025394.
  9. Zaravinos, Apostolos (July 2017). "Preface: Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressor Genes in Cancer: Honoring of Professor Demetrios A. Spandidos". Critical Reviews in Oncogenesis. 22 (3–4): 3–4 vii–x. doi:10.1615/CritRevOncog.2018025390.
  10. Mammas, Ioannis (October 2019). "Clinical Virology research and medical education in Greece: An interview with Demetrios A. Spandidos, Professor of Clinical Virology at the University of Crete in Greece". Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine. 18 (4): 3221–3225. doi:10.3892/etm.2019.7946.
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