Futures At
Fullerton and Cypress Colleges
Dr. Frederick Whipple
Biological Science Department
California State University, Fullerton
Title of talk
Advances in Genomics and Prospects for Personalized Medicine
Summary of talk
We are currently in the midst of an explosion of progress in the field of human genetics and genomics. New techniques and recent discoveries have important implications for medicine. In the future, physicians will be able to design custom-made preventative and therapeutic programs for individual patients based on their personal DNA profiles. Strategies for prevention and treatment of diseases like stroke, heart attack, cancer, and glaucoma will be guided by each patient’s genomic information. Powerful new drugs that are very effective in patients with certain genetic characteristics, but ineffective, or even toxic to other patients may become available. These developments hold the promise of much more effective, and also much less expensive medical care for everyone
Bio
Dr. Frederick Whipple has been a member of the the faculty of the Department of Biological Science at California State University, Fullerton since 2001. He teaches courses in genetics, molecular biology, and DNA damage and repair. His research on DNA recombination and bacterial transcription has been published in several scientific journals and has received funding from several sources including the National Institutes of Heath and the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Whipple received his Ph. D. degree from the Tufts University Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences in Boston, where he worked with Dr. A. L. Sonenshein on the mechanism of transcription in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. He then did postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, working with Dr. Ann Hochschild on regulation of transcription in bacteria, and with Dr. Tamar Enoch on aging in eukaryotic cells using yeast as a model system. Prior to beginning his academic career Dr. Whipple held positions in project management and marketing at the computer company Wang Laboratories.