Vishva Dixit

Dr. Visha Dixit is the Vice President of Physiological Chemistry at Genentech, Inc. Dixit is a trained physician who chose basic research in molecular biology over clinical practice, held a tenured position in academia, and then became an entrepreneur, senior manager, and leading researcher in his field. He is internationally recognized for studies defining the biochemical framework of key components of the cell death pathway, or apoptosis. Apoptosis was a mysterious process in the early nineties. A debate raged as to how the TNF receptor TNFR1 and its close homologue Fas engaged the suicide pathway. The first breakthrough was the demonstration from the Dixit laboratory that a cysteine protease (now termed caspase) was a component of the death receptor-induced apoptotic pathway. These observations set the stage for the identification of YAMA, or caspase-3, as the key downstream executioner protease, although this then begged the question of how it was engaged by death receptors. Other surface receptors functioned as ion channels or by altering intracellular phosphorylation events but death receptors signaled apoptosis by an entirely new mechanism. Specifically, an adapter protein termed FADD recruited and activated an initiating death protease termed FLICE/caspase-8. In other words, the second messenger emanating from the death receptor was a protease! These papers published on this research, designated citation classics, resulted in Dixit being the second most highly cited scientist in 1996. Dixit has gone on to make several other highly important discoveries uncovering the mechanics of the apoptosis pathway, as well as to use this understanding of apoptosis to make many breakthroughs by directly applying it to cancer therapeutics. He has received the Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis Award, the Clifford Prize, the NIH Director’s lecture, and the Columbia University HICC Distinguished Lecture. In addition to his American Academy of Arts and Sciences membership, Dixit is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the European Molecular Biology Association, and the Indian National Center for Biological Sciences. Dixit’s papers are exceptionally highly cited, and appear in prominent journals including Cell, Nature, and Science.