John Abrams graduated from Cornell University in 1982 and received a National Science Foundation Fellowship as he begin graduate work at Stanford University the following year. Under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Schimke, he analyzed the regulation, amplification and mutagenesis of transfected genes, receiving a Ph.D. in 1989. Later that year, Abrams moved to MIT as an American Cancer Society fellow, where joined the lab of Hermann Steller and launched molecular studies on programmed cell death. Using the Drosophila model, he uncovered the first global cell death defective mutation in this animal and later he identified reaper as the relevant gene encoding the predicted requisite apoptotic functions. In 1994, Abrams joined the faculty at UT Southwestern, where he continues research on the molecular physiology of cell death. His lab has identified additional apoptosis genes and, in recent efforts, his group characterized the Drosophila ortholog of p53, a tumor suppressor gene that is commonly mutated in human cancers. In 2001, Abrams received an ACS Research Scholar award. He is currently an Associate Professor in the department of Cell Biology.
