News Feature

Strengthening Chemistry: Building a Professorship with Genes

July 9, 2007

“The real fun of science isn’t in ‘Here’s what we all know that you should learn,’” chemist Ronald Breslow says. “The part that’s most fascinating is, ‘Here’s what we don’t know but we’d like to work together to figure out.’”

University Professor, co–director of Columbia’s Center for Electronic Transport in Molecular Nanostructures, and an accomplished pianist (who plays everything from popular music to improvisational jazz), Breslow is animated in explaining organic chemistry to the uninitiated: “We make new things,” he says. “We don’t just study the world as it is. Probably more than 95 percent of all known chemicals have been made, but every once in a while you find a new kind.”

In some cases, invented compounds substitute for identical substances that may exist in nature but are rare or difficult to collect. Others are completely new. They may have a readily apparent function, like mimicking biological enzymes, or they may serve as building blocks for subsequent research. From polymers to medicine, Breslow says, “most people in industry are working on applications, while we’re trying to develop the new parts. People take our stuff and run with it.”

One drug company certainly did. Joined by scientists at Sloan–Kettering, Breslow helped develop a breakthrough medication that halts the growth of cancer cells, turning half into normal cells through a process known as gene transcription. “We’re turning on and turning off certain genes,” he explains.

This drug has the potential to treat a number of different diseases—seemingly without causing harmful side effects. Its conceptual genesis dates back three decades, Breslow says, but it was only in the past few years that research was sufficiently promising to allow Breslow and his colleagues to form a start–up company with a license from the University for the underlying technology, and then to sell that company to Merck. This pharmaceutical company now markets the compound Breslow’s group invented as a prescription drug called Zolinza, which was approved by the FDA in October 2006.

The story could have ended happily there, with the University receiving a portion of the returns from the sale of the company. Instead, Professor Breslow and his wife used part of their own proceeds from the sale to establish the Esther Breslow Professorship in Organic or Biological Chemistry, with the help of a challenge grant from University Trustee Gerry Lenfest ‘58LAW. (Esther Breslow is a professor of biochemistry at Cornell Medical School; the chair will be renamed upon Ronald Breslow’s retirement to recognize him as well.)

Increasing endowment funds helps attract and retain the best faculty, across the University, and provides an environment more conducive to their work, both as scholars and teachers. “An endowed chair for an Arts and Sciences professor teaching undergraduates, for instance, makes undergraduate education more visible and underscores its importance to the University,” notes Robert Berne ’60CC, ‘62BUS, a retired real estate developer, former president of the Columbia College Alumni Association, former chair of the College Fund, and now a co–chair of Columbia’s undergraduate education Campaign committee.

According to Martha Howell, Miriam Champion Professor of History, who was honored with her chair about five years ago, “endowed chairs are one of the currencies of the profession. Columbia ought to have that currency because the faculty’s worth it. It’s astonishing how good our faculty is, despite how poor Columbia is relative to our peer institutions!” (Harvard’s total FY2006 endowment was $28.9 billion, Yale’s $18 billion, Stanford’s $14.1 billion, and Princeton’s $13 billion—yet Columbia’s was $5.9 billion.) But, Howell cautions, to retain Columbia’s high caliber of faculty by recognizing its most distinguished members, the University must increase the number of endowed professorships across all schools.

Since the Lenfest Challenge was announced last September, alumni, parents, and friends have endowed three other professorships toward a Campaign goal of 50 in the Arts and Sciences. Similar challenges are also building faculty at the law school, where Lenfest established a second matching program, and at the business school, through the generosity of Arthur Samberg ‘67BUS.

“With the leverage from the Lenfest match,” Breslow says, “I could actually make a difference here.” Many would argue that Breslow, a Columbia faculty member for more than 50 years, had already been making a major difference. Among his generations of students, he has taught three Nobel Prize winners. He has chaired a presidential search committee (leading to the hiring of William J. McGill, who served from 1970 to 1980). And his leadership of another committee resulted in its recommendation that Columbia College admit women in the early 1980s.

Breslow’s endowment gift will also provide research funds for the chemistry department. “Research is part of the business of the University,” Breslow says. “I think you can have a very well defined, useful effect on a department by taking some responsibility for research support,” he explains, noting that “over the years, the chemistry department has lost some really great people” who have gone to other universities that offer more support. Breslow himself declined opportunities to leave because he believed “Columbia could be better than it was.” The University needs resources to be able to give its faculty more direct research support.Fortunately for Columbia, Breslow’s breakthrough put him in a position to lead the way.
-Marcus Tonti