Mark. R. Philips, MD is Professor of Medicine, Cell Biology and Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology, and Associate Director for Basic Science at the NYU Cancer Institute; and Director of the Medical Scientist Training (MD/PhD) Program at the New York University School of Medicine.
Mark Philips is a molecular cell biologist who focuses on the post-translational modification and membrane targeting of small GTPases, especially Ras. His discovery in 1999 that Ras proteins are modified on, and traffic through, internal membranes en route to the plasma membrane had a major impact in the field. He went on to show that Ras can signal from internal membranes and made numerous contributions to our current understanding of Ras modification and trafficking. Current projects in his laboratory include efforts to characterize the effects of phosphorylation on Kras4B, differential trafficking of the two splice variants of Kras, novel cytosolic chaperones for Ras, as well as assay development for Kras membrane association and their application to genome wide RNAi and small compound screening.
Dr. Philips obtained his BA from Harvard (’78) and MD from Columbia College of Physician’s and Surgeons (’82) before coming to NYU/Bellevue to train in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. He began his exploration of small GTPases in the context of inflammatory cells as a Rheumatology fellow in the laboratory of Gerald Weissmann and obtained further post-doctoral training in Cell Biology with David Sabatini. He opened his own laboratory at NYU in 1991 and has been funded by the NIH continuously since 1993. He rose to the rank of full professor in 2002. He was appointed Associate Director of the NYU Cancer Institute in 2003 and Director of the Medical Scientist Training (MD/PhD) Program in 2011. Dr. Philips is the recipient of the Young Scholar Award from the Arthritis Foundation, the Orlof Award for Biomedical Research, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Award for Translational Research and the BioAccelerate NYC Prize. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians and the Interurban Clinical Club.