William Plunkett, Ph.D

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
The University of Texas
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
1515 Holcombe Blvd., Box 428
Houston, TX
(713) 745 2376
http://www.mdanderson.org

Dr. William Plunkett is Professor at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. His administrative appointment is a Chief, Section of Molecular and Cellular Oncology in the Department of Experimental Therapeutics. He has been a member of the faculty since 1975, and has also had an appointment in the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston since 1976.

A portion of his career has focused on elucidating the metabolism and mechanisms of action of therapeutic nucleoside analogs. In particular, his investigations of fludarabine and of gemcitabine demonstrated clinically active drugs have multiple mechanisms of action.

He has enjoyed committed and effective collaborations with his colleagues involved with clinical research. These interactions have permitted Dr. Plunkett to formulate hypotheses from laboratory studies, which he and his colleagues later translated to the design of clinical trials. These productive collaborations have resulted in advances in clinical treatment that induce remissions more effectively and maintain them longer than previously possible in chronic and acute leukemias.

While Dr. Plunkett has had a productive research career, he is particularly interested in education of the next generation of scientists. This activity has been recognized by his election to President of the Faculty of The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the award of the 1st Sowell-Huggins Professorship in Cancer Research in that school.

He was the recipient of the Service to Mankind Award from the Leukemia Society of America in 1989, and was recognized for his Clinical Research endeavors with the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Faculty Achievement Award in 1996. For ten years he was the incumbent of the Olive and Hubert Stringer Professorship in Medical Oncology, and currently holds the Barnts Family Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research since 1999.

His major pursuits at the present time are related to development of novel therapeutics based on knowledge of cellular responses to DNA damage.

Selected Publications

• Gandhi V, Estey E, Du M, Keating MJ, Plunkett W. Minimum doses of fludarabine for the maximum modulation of arabinosylcytosine triphosphate in human leukemia blasts during therapy. Clin Cancer Res 3:1539-1545, 1997
• Huang P, Ballal K, Plunkett W. Biochemical characterization of the protein activity responsible for high molecular weight DNA fragmentation during drug-induced apoptosis. Cancer Res 57:3407-3414, 1997
• Iwasaki H, Huang P, Plunkett W. Differential incorporation of ara-C, gemcitabine, and fludarabine into replicating and repairing DNA in proliferating human leukemia cells. Blood 90:270-278, 1997
• Plunkett W, Huang P, Searcy CE, Gandhi V. Gemcitabine: Preclinical pharmacology and mechanisms of action. Semin Oncol 23(suppl 10):3-15, 1996
• Sandoval A, Consoli U, Plunkett W. Fludarabine-mediated inhibition of nucleotide excision repair induces apoptosis in quiescent human lymphocytes. Clin Cancer Res 2:1731-1742, 1996