James L. Wittliff, Ph.D., M.D.

Dr. Wittliff received an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Austin, and the M.S. degree in Biochemistry at Louisiana State University, School of Medicine. His postdoctoral studies were conducted in the Biology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Before joining the University of Louisville in 1976 as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry, Dr. Wittliff assisted in the development of the Cancer Center at the University of Rochester, where he was Director of the Section of Endocrine Biochemistry and a member of the Department of Biochemistry.

He and his research team are internationally recognized for innovative studies on the molecular mechanisms by which estrogens promote signal transduction in normal tissue and breast cancer. He was one of the first investigators to identify a correlation between the presence of estrogen receptor proteins in a breast cancer biopsy and response to either additive or surgical ablative hormone therapy. This finding contributed significantly to collaborative studies with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast Project (NSABP), which established the use of Tamoxifen as an adjuvant therapy for breast cancer. His results also helped extend the use of estrogen and progestin receptors as tissue markers of a breast cancer patient's prognosis. Wittliff's discovery of frequent receptor polymorphism in human breast cancer lead to the prediction of the presence of another isoform of the estrogen receptor, confirmed recently as ER-beta.

A major contribution to laboratory medicine was made when Dr. Wittliff, working with NEN/DuPont, developed the first FDA-approved kits for assessing steroid receptor levels in tumor biopsies. Complementing this effort, Dr. Wittliff's laboratory in the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, University of Louisville, was designated the National Reference Facility for performing quality assurance surveys of receptor testing for cooperative clinical trial groups in the U.S. and Canada. His laboratory continued to serve the profession by collaborating with the College of American Pathologists in providing proficiency surveys for these analytes.

Dr. Wittliff's laboratory has provided comprehensive graduate training in molecular endocrinology for more than three decades, and the International Scholars Program he founded in 1969, has attracted more than 75 research scientists and students from 31 countries. He and his research fellows have published several hundred scientific papers and book chapters on steroid and peptide hormone receptors, covering both basic and clinical aspects. In addition to numerous professorships at universities in Europe, Asia, and Africa, he was a recipient of the George Grannis Research Award and elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry (NACB) IN 1984. Dr. Wittliff and Rosalyn Yalow (Nobel Laureate) received the Distinguished Scientist Awards from the Clinical Ligand Assay Society in 1988. He was appointed Inaugural Guest Professor at the Institute of Applied Microbiology in Vienna, Austria and in 1992, where he continues to serve as Visiting Professor in addition to his duties as Director of the Hormone Receptor Laboratory in the Brown Cancer Center. He was elected President of the International Clinical Ligand Assay Society in 1996. In recognition of his research and clinical contributions to the biology and treatment of cancer, the University of Innsbruck, Austria awarded Dr. Wittliff the degree, Doctor of Medicine honoris causa in 1998. In 2001, he received the award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Chemistry in a Selected Area of Research from the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. He was recognized for his original research in the area of the molecular endocrinology of human cancer. Dr. Wittliff served as Visiting Industry Professor at Arcturus Applied Genomics in San Diego, where he is conducting research with microarrays to generate the gene expression profiles of normal and neoplastic cells procured by a novel technology called Laser Capture Microdissection.