David A. Boothman
* Deceased
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Professor of Hematology-Oncology - 2017
Dr. David Boothman completed his B.S. at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. His graduate work was in microbiology and immunology at the University of Miami Medical School, where he received his Ph.D. under the mentorship of Dr. Sheldon Greer.
He completed postdoctoral research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of Harvard Medical School with Dr. Arthur B. Pardee. While there, he investigated changes in several aspects of cancer cells before and after cell stress: cell cycle checkpoint regulation, molecular biology, and gene expression. His studies on β-lapachone as a radiosensitizer and DNA repair inhibitor began at this time. Dr. Boothman also discovered and cloned the first proteins and transcripts induced by ionizing radiation (IR).
In 1990, Dr. Boothman was named Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and continued his investigations of x-ray-inducible proteins (Boothman et al., Cancer Research, 1988), and x-ray-inducible transcripts leading to proteins (Boothman et al., PNAS, 2000). He discovered xip8 (clusterin) and its induction by super-low levels of IR exposure. Dr. Boothman then joined the faculty in the Department of Human Oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he rose to Associate Professor with tenure and became the Vice Chairman of Radiation Oncology, and Division Head of Molecular Radiation Oncology.
Dr. Boothman accepted an Endowed Professorship at Case Western Reserve University in 1998 and became heavily involved in the Cancer Center. In 2000, he was named the Associate Director for Basic Science and headed the research effort in the Cancer Center's Wolstein Research Building.
In 2005, Dr. Boothman and his close colleague Dr. Jinming Gao moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to start the Cell Stress and Cancer Nanomedicine Program.
In 2017, Dr. Boothman moved to the Indiana University School of Medicine where he held the position of Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and became the Sid and Lois Eskenazi Chair in Cancer Research, and the Associate Director of Translational Research in the Simon Cancer Center.
Dr. Boothman trained 16 Ph.D. students, two M.D./Ph.D. students, and more than 40 postdoctoral fellows and residents, who went on to hold positions around the nation and in seven different countries and in various aspects of scientific research.