David G Kaufman, Ph.D

Professor David G. Kaufman majored in Physics as an undergraduate at Reed College. He received his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, Missouri) in 1968; and his Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology (with an emphasis on molecular biology) in 1973. He did his residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Barnes-Washington University Hospital. He did postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland), focusing on lung cancer and DNA replication research. He was recruited to the Department of Pathology at the University of North Carolina in 1975 and he has remained there to the present. He is currently Professor in the department and formerly was Vice Chair. Throughout this interval Dr. Kaufman has practiced medicine as an attending anatomic pathologist at the University of North Carolina Hospitals. Concurrently, he pursued an active and diverse research program. Related to clinical service in gynecologic oncologic pathology, he participated in an epidemiologic study of the relationship between post-menopausal estrogen therapy and endometrial cancer. This study provided powerful evidence that estrogen therapy caused endometrial cancer. In a subpopulation of this study patients that received progestins in addition to estrogen he recognized that progestins not only eliminated the excess risk from estrogen but actually lowered the risk below that of controls who were not taking hormones. Based on his interest in endometrial cancer he studied human endometrial tissue in organ and cell culture. Eventually he was able to reconstitute human endometrial tissue in co-cultures with the morphology of endometrial tissue in vivo and the ability to respond to hormones with physiologic changes characteristic of the menstrual cycle. Other studies revealed that the mitogenic effects of estrogen on endometrial epithelial cells involved paracrine responses resulting from estrogen effects on co-cultured endometrial stromal cells.

He also studied the relationship between the cell cycle and carcinogenesis. He showed that synchronized cells were most vulnerable to malignant transformation when treated with chemical carcinogens as they entered the S-phase of the cell cycle. He also showed that DNA at the site of replication was exquisitely vulnerable to attach by chemical carcinogens. In efforts to characterize DNA replication and repair the adopted single fiber (molecule) analysis, tracing the localization of newly replicated DNA and DNA damage sites tagged with fluorescent probes.

Dr. Kaufman has received many extramural grants from the NIH to support his research, to support graduate and postdoctoral training and to purchase high end common-use equipment. He has published nearly 200 papers and book chapters. He has trained 12 students granted PhDs and about 40 postdoctoral trainees.

Dr. Kaufman has served in a number of capacities in national societies and advisory bodies. He was a committee member, committee chair and council member for grant awarding agencies, including the NIH, National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society. He was a member of several scientific committees of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. He served on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board and on the Advisory Board of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He was President the leading society in his discipline, the American Society for Investigative Pathology. Later, he was President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which represents nearly 100,000 scientists.