Zena was a professor and vice chair in the Department of Anatomy at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) for over 40 years and was the associate director for basic science at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her foundational work on macrophage physiology, the extracellular matrix (ECM), mammary gland development, breast cancer and tumor-associated inflammation made her one of the most respected researchers in the world. Zena’s contributions led to numerous awards and honors, including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for Cancer Research, presidency of the American Society of Cell Biology, the E.B. Wilson Medal from the American Society of Cell Biology and the Paget-Ewing Award from the Metastasis Research Society. However, Zena, as a devoted mentor and a fierce advocate for junior faculty and particularly women, took special pride in the UCSF Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Award, which she received in 2015. Thus, the story of Zena Werb and the TME is also the story of her dedicated mentoring.
Zena was born in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in Germany. After the war, her family emigrated to Canada, and she grew up in a rural community, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse. Following her undergraduate studies, Zena conducted her graduate research with Zanvil A. Cohn at Rockefeller University, focusing on lipid metabolism in macrophages. Despite being biochemically inclined, Zena was enthralled when she first observed macrophages moving in real time under the microscope — an experience that laid the foundation for her later love of cell biology, innate immunity and intravital microscopy. During her postdoctoral training with John T. Dingle at the Strangeways Research Laboratory, in Cambridge, England, she began investigating a new (at the time) family of proteolytic enzymes secreted by fibroblasts, called matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). This class of ECM-remodeling enzymes would comprise another cornerstone of her life’s work. After starting her own lab at Dartmouth Medical School, Zena relocated to UCSF in 1976, where she quickly established her reputation as a rigorous and prolific scientist. Much of her early independent research focused on fibroblast and macrophage MMPs, and she and her first postdoctoral fellow, Michael J. Banda, were the first to purify and characterize MMP12.
