Ronald A. DePinho

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Ronald A. DePinho
DePinho.jpeg
Born1955
Alma mater
Spouse(s) Lynda Chin
Children3
Scientific career
Institutions

Ronald A. DePinho, was the fourth president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and is internationally recognized for basic and translational research in cancer, aging and age-associated degenerative disorders. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.

National Academy of Sciences science branch of the United States National Academies

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Contents

DePinho assumed the presidency at MD Anderson on Sept. 1, 2011. [1] He was only the fourth full-time president in the 70-year history of MD Anderson. [2] He announced his resignation on March 8, 2017, after scrutiny over the administration of the organization had put him in the spotlight, and remained through the end of the 85th Texas Legislative Session. [3] [4]

Prior to joining MD Anderson, he spent 14 years at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. There, he was founding director of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber and was a professor in the Department of Medicine (genetics) at Harvard and an American Cancer Society Research Professor. Previously, he held numerous faculty positions during 10 years at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. DePinho is married to noted cancer geneticist, Lynda Chin and has three children, Alexis, Carolyn, and Joseph DePinho.

Harvard Medical School Medical school in Boston, MA

Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consistently ranked 1st among research-oriented medical schools by U.S. News and World Report. Unlike most other leading medical schools, HMS does not operate in conjunction with a single hospital but is directly affiliated with several teaching hospitals in the Boston area. The HMS faculty has approximately 2,900 full- and part-time voting faculty members consisting of assistant, associate, and full professors, and over 5,000 full- and part-time, non-voting instructors. The majority of the faculty receive their appointments through an affiliated teaching hospital.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine ("Einstein") is a medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Einstein currently operates as an independent degree-granting institute under the Montefiore Medical Center. Einstein has earned a reputation as one of the nation's foremost medical schools, currently ranked 13th in an outcomes-based study reported in the journal Academic Medicine and consistently ranked as one of the "Best Medical Schools" in both research and primary care by U.S. News & World Report. Faculty members received over $174 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) alone in 2017, ranking 7th in funding per-investigator across 139 medical schools in the US.

Lynda Chin is an American medical doctor. She is a board-certified dermatologist who was the founding department chair and professor of genomic medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, as well as scientific director of the MD Anderson Institute for Applied Cancer Science. In late 2012 she was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies.

Research

At Dana-Farber and Harvard, DePinho guided major basic-translational research programs focused on brain, colorectal, pancreatic and prostate cancers. Under his leadership, the Belfer Institute followed industry-like principles to systematically translate basic research findings into clinical endpoints.

His scientific program has made fundamental discoveries underlying cancer in the aged and factors governing acquired and inherited degenerative disorders. He established the concept of tumor maintenance, discovered a core pathway of aging and demonstrated that aging is a reversible process. [5] He has constructed and used refined mouse models of cancer to identify many new cancer targets and diagnostics.

Background

DePinho was born in the Bronx, NY in 1955 to Celeste and Alvaro DePinho. He is the third of five children. He earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences in 1977 from Fordham University, where he graduated summa cum laude as class salutatorian. He received his medical degree with distinction in microbiology and immunology in 1981 from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Fordham University American university

Fordham University is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named for the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx in which its main campus is located, Fordham is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit-affiliated university in the northeastern United States, and the third-oldest university in New York State.

Salutatorian is an academic title given in the United States, Armenia, and the Philippines to the second-highest-ranked graduate of the entire graduating class of a specific discipline. Only the valedictorian is ranked higher. This honor is traditionally based on grade point average (GPA) and number of credits taken, but consideration may also be given to other factors such as co-curricular and extracurricular activities. The title comes from the salutatorian's traditional role as the first speaker at a graduation ceremony, delivering the salutation. In a high school setting, a salutatorian may also be asked to speak about the current graduating class or to deliver an invocation or benediction. In some instances, the salutatorian may even deliver an introduction for the valedictorian. The general themes of a salutatorian speech and valediction are usually of growth, outlook towards the future, and thankfulness.

He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, followed by postdoctoral fellowships in the Department of Cell Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.[ citation needed ]

Columbia University Private Ivy League research university in New York City

Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world.

DePinho's independent scientific career began at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was the Feinberg Senior Scholar in Cancer Research. There, he established the first National Cancer Institute-supported shared transgenic and gene targeting facility, which enabled his laboratory and many other researchers to model and study the genetic basis of cancer and other complex diseases.[ citation needed ]

Honors

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References

  1. "Incoming MD Anderson chief sets challenge for institution". The Houston Chronicle. Retrieved Sep 1, 2011.
  2. "MD Anderson's Past Presidents". The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Retrieved Sep 1, 2011.
  3. https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/2017/03/-change-in-leadership-at-md-anderson.html
  4. https://www.statnews.com/2017/03/08/md-anderson-depinho-resigns/
  5. "Partial reversal of aging achieved in mice". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved Sep 1, 2011.
  6. "Cidadãos Estrangeiros Agraciados com Ordens Portuguesas". Página Oficial das Ordens Honoríficas Portuguesas. Retrieved 29 January 2017.