Don Cleveland

Don Cleveland is Distinguished Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and is an elected fellow of the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research. Cleveland has defined molecular mechanisms responsible for chromosomal movement, cell cycle control, centromere identity, and genome evolution in cancer, including demonstration that chromosome misssegregation can trigger chromosome shattering (chromothripsis) that initiates and drives genome evolution in cancer, including gene amplification through generation of extrachromosomal DNAs (ecDNAs) that can drive cancer drug resistance.