Keynote Speakers

Lawrence Wangh, Professor

Lawrence J. Wangh, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biology at Brandeis University and director of the laboratory of Molecular Diagnostics and Global Health. He earned his B.A. at Brandeis University (1968) and his Ph.D. at Rockefeller University (1973) in Biochemistry. As a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow, Professor Wangh studied developmental biology in the laboratories of John Gurdon (MRC Cambridge) and Jamshed Tata (MRC, Mill Hill). Professor Wangh joined the faculty of Brandeis University in 1977 where he did seminal work leading to the invention of whole animal cloning. Professor Wangh and his laboratory colleagues invented LATE-PCR about twelve years ago in the course of working on improved methods of single-cell PCR. Over the past decade they have analyzed the properties and possibilities inherent to reactions which reliably generate single stranded amplicons. For the past eight years his research has been funded through a combination of NIH grants (US), TSB grants (UK), and research support from Smiths Detection Diagnostics, Inc. They are currently developing assays for a wide spectrum of human and animal infectious diseases, cancers, and degenerative diseases. They also continue to explore and improve LATE-PCR and its Allied Technologies.