John Mendelsohn (doctor)

John Mendelsohn

John Mendelsohn (born August 31, 1936) is the past president of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He is an internationally recognized leader in cancer research.

Mendelsohn served as MD Anderson president from 1996 to 2011. When Ronald DePinho became president, he stepped down Sept. 1, 2011. Mendelsohn remains on the faculty as co-director of the new Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy. Also, he is a senior fellow in health and technology at the Baker Institute .[1]

Mendelsohn was only the third full-time president of MD Anderson. When he arrived, Mendelsohn's focus shifted from his expertise in laboratory research and clinical trials to leading an institution that employs about 18,000 people and serves 100,000 patients yearly, with a budget of more than $3.3 billion.[2]

Background

Mendelsohn earned his bachelor's degree in sciences magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1958. He was the first undergraduate student of James D. Watson, who later won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for identifying the structure of DNA. After spending a year in Scotland as a Fulbright Scholar in biochemistry, Mendelsohn received his medical degree cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1963.

From 1970 to 1985 at the University of California, San Diego, Mendelsohn was founding director of a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, which he led from its inception in 1976 until he moved to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. From 1985 to 1996, Mendelsohn chaired the institution's Department of Medicine and was co-head of the Program in Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He also was professor and vice chairman of medicine at Cornell University Medical College.

Mendelsohn was a member the Audit Committee of Enron when it collapsed.

Research

When Mendelsohn joined MD Anderson, he had an international reputation for his research on how the binding of growth factors to cell-surface receptors regulates cell functions.

He and Gordon Sato and their collaborators in California produced monoclonal antibody 225, which inhibits human cancer cell proliferation by blocking the signaling pathways that are activated by epidermal growth factor receptors. His subsequent research in the laboratory and clinic pioneered the universally adopted concept of anti-receptor therapy that targets key cell signaling pathways as a new form of cancer treatment. Antibody 225 (commercially known as Cetuximab, or Erbitux) against the receptor for epidermal growth factor was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of colon cancer in 2004 and for head and neck cancer in 2006.

Honors

Mendelsohn served 10 years as the founding editor of Clinical Cancer Research, and he has been on numerous editorial boards. He has authored more than 250 scientific papers and articles for journals and books, and is senior editor of the textbook "The Molecular Basis of Cancer."

He has been honored many times for his contributions to cancer research with major awards, including the Joseph H. Burchenal Clinical Research Award from the American Association for Cancer Research (1999), David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2002), Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal (2005), Dan David Prize in Cancer Therapy (2006), Dorothy P. Landon-AACR Prize for Translational Research (2008), AACR Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research (2012) and Research!America's Geoffrey Beene Builders of Science Award (2013). He was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has been a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000.[3]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ "Outgoing M.D. Anderson president to join Baker Institute". The Houston Chronicle. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
  2. ↑ "Institutional Profile". MD Anderson Cancer Center. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  3. ↑ "John Mendelsohn". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 13 February 2016. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
  4. ↑ "Targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor for cancer therapy". Journal of Clinical Oncology. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
  5. ↑ "Recombinant humanized anti-HER2 antibody". Cancer Research. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Epidermal growth factor receptor family and chemosensitization". Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Retrieved March 2, 2011.

External links

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