Michael Karin & UCSD Cited for High-Impact Research Papers

UCSD pharmacology professor Michael Karin, Ph.D. ranked first worldwide and UCSD was 5th among institutions in a recent listing of most-cited molecular biology and genetic research papers published in prestigious journals such as Cell, Nature, Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia, which tracks scientific publishing, listed 25 institutional and 17 individual researcher "cell superstars and genome giants" in the September/October edition of its publication Science Watch. The organization looked at the 200 most-cited papers in molecular biology and genetics research published between 1994-98 and cited through 1999 by other researchers.

Karin, a member of the UCSD Cancer Center who specializes in cell signaling and gene transcription research, headed ISI's list with 15 high-impact papers that were cited 6,677 times during the six-year period. Also an American Cancer Society research professor, he is known for revealing new pathways of communication within and between cells.

In a 1999 interview with Karin, Science Watch said that signal transduction is one of the hottest areas of research and "few researchers have had the remarkable impact or maintained the extraordinary long-term productivity as molecular biologist Michael Karin."

Tied for 12th on the ISI list were UCSD professors of medicine Christopher K. Glass, M.D. and Michael Geoffrey Rosenfeld, M.D., who co-authored nine papers that were cited 2,597 times. Rosenfeld is a fellow with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and both researchers are members of the UCSD Cancer Center.

In its listing of total citations by institution, UCSD ranked 5th with papers cited 12,942 times between 1994 and 1999. Heading the institutional list was the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) with 76,5000 citations, more than twice as many as next-ranked Harvard, which had 37,118. MIT came in third with 15,966 and Johns Hopkins University was fourth with 13,570.

Other San Diego institutions on the ISI list were Salk Institute, ranked 7th with 11,265 citations, and the Burnham Institute, 18th with 7,762 citations. San Diego researchers cited were John C. Reed, Burnham Institute, ranked 3rd with 13 papers and 5,268 citations; and Ronald M. Evans, Salk Institute and HHMI, ranked 5th with 12 papers and 4,646 citations.

The top institutions on the ISI list were:

1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute

2. Harvard University

3. MIT

4. Johns Hopkins University

5. UCSD

6. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

7. Salk Institute

8. UC San Francisco

9. Yale University

10. Rockefeller University

11. Stanford

12. University of Texas Southwest Medical Center

13. Washington University

14. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

15. Columbia University

16. Imperial Cancer Research Fund

17. National Cancer Institute

18. Burnham Institute

19. Whitehead Institute

20. Universite Laval

The top researchers were:

1. Michael Karin, UCSD

2. Joan Massague, HHMI

3. John C. Reed, Burnham Institute

4. Charles J. Sherr, HHMI, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

5. Ronald M. Evans, HHMI, Salk Institute

6. David V. Goeddel, Tularik, Inc.

7. Kenneth W. Kinzler, Johns Hopkins University

Bert Vogelstein, HHMI, Johns Hopkins University

8. David Beach, Institute of Child Health, United Kingdom

9. Vishva M. Dixit, Genentech Inc

10. Stephen J. Elledge, HHMI, Bayor,

11. David Baltimore, Caltech

12. Christopher K. Glass, UCSD

Michael G. Rosenfeld, HHMI, UCSD

13. Roger J. Davis, HHMI, University of Massachusetts

14. James M. Roberts, HHMI, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Res. Ctr

15. Stanley J. Korssmeyer, HHMI, Dana-Farber Cancer Inst