Woman in Science

by: Megan Campbell

Pamela J. Bjorkman, Ph.D.-
Photo    As time progresses more and more women become influential in the scientific field.  Dr.  Pamela Bjorkman is one example.  She has been a professor of Biology at California Institute of Technology since 1989. She also is an Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry at    the University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles.  However, she got started with an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from the University  the of Oregon in 1978.  Then she earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard University in 1984.  For her post-doctoral fellow she worked in Don Wiley's lab and with the American Cancer Society, at Harvard, solving the crystal structure of the human histocompatibility molecule (a molecule involved with the attachment of HIV to the helper-T cell).  She, then, completed a second post-doctoral fellow at Stanford with Mark Davis working on T-cell receptors.  In addition she is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and has been a Pew Scholar in the biomedical sciences.   

    Currently, Pamela Bjorkman continues researching at California Institute of Technology on cell surface receptor sites, especially relating to the immune system.  She describes her work as a combination of x-ray crystallography, molecular biology and biochemistry.  She began her research focused on AIDS, however, now her research relates to iron metabolism, cancer, and virology.  Dr. Bjorkman and those in the lab are interested in determining the three-dimensional structure of the proteins involved in cell receptors.  Through determining these structures they will be able to better  to understand the function of the cell and the infectious agent entering or communicating with the cell.

    She has received numerous awards including the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Fundamental Immunology, the Gairdner Foundation International Award for achievements in medical science, and the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Award.  Additionally, Dr. Bjorkman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences on May 23, 2001.    [image: zag.jpg]

    On April 28, 1999, Dr Bjorkman announced that she
and her team of researchers had discovered the protein 
responsible for weight loss in cancer and AIDS patients. 
The protein is called ZAG and it takes part in 
metabolizing fat molecules.  Dr. Bjorkman believes that 
the tumor cells somehow stimulate the overproduction 
of the ZAG protein.  This knowledge will not only help to 
aid patients with weight loss problems related to cancer 
or AIDS, but also to create a drug to heal obesity. 

 

                                                                                            

 

Photo Credit: Caltech Press Releases

For more information about Dr. Pamela Bjorkman:

http://www.hhmi.org/research/investigators/bjorkman.html

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~bjorker/