Mark A. Lemmon


Mark Andrew Lemmon an English-born biochemist, is a professor of Pharmacology at Yale University where he co-directs the Cancer Biology Institute with Joseph Schlessinger.

Education

Lemmon was born in Norfolk, England in 1964 and grew up in Taverham and Poringland. He was educated at Norwich School, and then at Hertford College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in Biochemistry in 1988. He completed his PhD at Yale University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow supervised by Donald Engelman for research on the oligomerization of transmembrane α-helices.

Research and career

Following his PhD, Lemmon was a postdoctoral researcher and fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation at New York University in the laboratory of Joseph Schlessinger. Following his postdoctoral research, Lemmon was recruited to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, where he gained tenure in 2001 and became Departmental Chair in 2008. He remains an Adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at University of Pennsylvania.
Lemmon's research combines biochemistry and structural biology with cell biology, focusing on understanding molecular mechanisms of transmembrane signalling by cell-surface growth factor receptors such as the epidermal growth factor receptor and other receptor tyrosine kinases. With Kathryn Ferguson and others, he also played an important role in understanding the structure and function of the Pleckstrin homology domain in phosphoinositide signalling and elsewhere.
Lemmon has made important contributions to the discovery of both normal and pathological activation mechanisms of growth factor receptors and the signalling networks that they engage within cells. He is also committed to exploiting this understanding clinically. These receptors and their downstream effectors are activated aberrantly in numerous cancers, and are important targets of cancer drugs. Lemmon's recent work has focused on the need to understand the biochemistry of oncogenic activation to use such drugs effectively.
Before moving to Yale, Lemmon was George W. Raiziss Professor and Chair of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.
Lemmon serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Cell, Molecular Cell, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Science Signaling. He serves as associate editor for the Biochemical Journal. Between 2007 and 2013, Lemmon served as secretary for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Awards and honours

Lemmon was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2016. In 2012 Lemmon was awarded the Dorothy Hodgkin prize by the Protein Society.