Prof. Dr. William G. Thilly, Sc.D.

Professor of Genetics, Toxicology and Biological Engineering, MIT

 

Bill Thilly studied at MIT as both an undergraduate (’67) and graduate (’71) joining the faculty of what is now the Department of Biological Engineering as Assistant Professor of Genetic Toxicology in 1972. His research group developed and apllied the first quantitative assays for (eukaryotic) human cell mutation, assays involving cells expressing cytochromes CYP-450, the “microcarrier” technology for mass production of mammalian cells and derived products such as viral vaccines, the technology for measuring point mutations in cultured human cells, tissues, tumors and populations both by denaturing capillary electrophoresis and mismatch amplification.  In the area of epidemiology, with his student Dr. Pablo Herrero-Jimenez, his group organized the U.S, record of disease mortality 1900-2010 and made it available to researchers at http://mortalityanalysis.mit.edu. Combining the results of laboratory measurements and “macro”-epidemiological data he has contributed to the continuing development of mathematical tools and theory for research in cancer and other diseases. in particular this led to an amended two-stage model in which all human tumor initiation events are limited to the mutator/hypermutable stem cells of the fetal/juvenile growth period. A dedicated teacher, he has received both the Baker and Sizer Awards for outstanding teaching at MIT for undergraduates and graduates, respectively. 

 

Starting circa 2001 he and his collaborator-wife, Dr. Elena V. Gostjeva, addressed the curious condition that there appeared to be no published images of stem cells in literature of organogenesis, carcinogenesis or atherosclerogenesis. In 2003, Dr. Gostjeva discovered (and photographed)  the bizarre “metakaryotic” stem cells that differed significantly from “eukaryotic” cells (extracytoplasmic hollow bell shaped nuclei, no mitoses, circular genomes, dsRNA/DNA replicative genomic intermediates) . Together they have studied their many  peculiar characteristics, discovered that as cancer stem cells they are resistant to common x-ray and chemotherapeutic regimens, discovered they are sensitive to many widely-used medicaments  and, with clinical colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin advanced to the discovery that one such medicament is apparently effective in killing metakaryotic stem cells in human tumors. He has applied the observations from many separate research areas to a propopsal for attempting to cure of diseases driven by metakaryotic stem growth: use a series of metakaryocidal drugs for durations sufficient to kill all such pathogenic stem cells as in adenocarcinomas and derived metastases. He has also proposed the potentially more effective prophylactic approach of treating middle aged adults with metakaryotic drugs to purge the body of the stem cells in pre-cancerous lesions such as adenomas. In 2004 he and Dr. Gostjeva were jointly honored with the Medal of the Tohoku Medical Society for their combined efforts in Japanese-American cancer epidemiology and the discovery of the metakaryotic stem cells in human organogenesis and carcinogenesis. 

 

See: http://mortalityanalysis.mit.edu/AAA-METAKARYOTIC-BIOLOGY-PUBS