Vincent T. DeVita

Last updated
Vincent T. DeVita
Nci-vol-2727-300 Vincent DeVita.jpg
DeVita in 1999
Born
Vincent Theodore DeVita Jr.

(1935-03-07) March 7, 1935 (age 89)
SpouseMary Kay Bush
Children
Relatives Paul Raeburn (son-in-law)

Vincent Theodore DeVita Jr. (born March 7, 1935) is the Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medicine at Yale Cancer Center, and a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health. He directed the Yale Cancer Center from 1993 to 2003. [1] He has been president of the board of directors of the American Cancer Society (2012-2013). [2] [3] He is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the field of oncology for his work on combination-chemotherapy treatments. [1] [4]

Contents

The Pier Luigi Nervi International Award for Cancer Research that DeVita received in 1985 Pierluigi nervi international award for cancer research.jpg
The Pier Luigi Nervi International Award for Cancer Research that DeVita received in 1985

Early life and education

Vincent DeVita was born in The Bronx, New York. [5]

DeVita attended the College of William and Mary, receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in 1957. In 1961 he earned his MD degree with distinction from the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. [4] [1]

Career

DeVita joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1963 as a clinical fellow, working with Emil "Tom" Frei, Emil J. Freireich and others. He returned as a senior investigator in 1966 after completing his training at Yale-New Haven Medical Center in 1965. [6] [7] [8] At NCI, DeVita held the following posts: Senior Investigator in the Solid Tumor Service, Head of the Solid Tumor Service, Chief of the Medicine Branch, Director of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Clinical Director of NCI (as of 1975). [6]

While at NCI, he helped to develop MOPP, a four-drug combination that was the first successful combination chemotherapy program. At the time, many oncologists believed such an approach was too toxic and would do more harm than good. MOPP was used to treat Hodgkin's disease and diffuse large cell lymphomas, reducing the likelihood of dying from Hodgkin's disease from nearly 100% to around 30%. [4] DeVita's results, presented in 1965 and 1970 were initially viewed with considerable disbelief. [7] By demonstrating that a combination-chemotherapy regimen could be successful, DeVita established the basis for further combination therapies, which became a mainstay of cancer treatment. [3] [7] In addition, in collaboration with George Canellos, DeVita developed the combination chemotherapy CMF, which still remains a useful therapy for breast cancer. [9] : 165  [10]

From 1977 to 1978, DeVita was the president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). [11]

In 1980, DeVita was appointed Director of the NCI and the National Cancer Program by President Jimmy Carter, [6] [12] a position he held until 1988. [13]

From January 1989 to 1993, DeVita was Physician-in-Chief and Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he was part of the program for Molecular Pharmacology. [13] [14] [15]

In 1993 he returned to Yale, where he became Director of Yale Cancer Center, serving from 1993 to 2003. In 2004, he was named as the Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medicine at Yale University, a position to be renamed the Vincent T. DeVita Professor of Medicine after his tenure. He is currently the chair of the Yale Cancer Center advisory board and is professor of internal medicine and of epidemiology and public health at Yale's medical school. [16]

From 2012-2013, DeVita served as president of the board of directors of the American Cancer Society. [2] DeVita currently serves on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals and has authored over 450 scientific articles. He is a co-editor of the textbook Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology, in its 10th edition, [3] and serves as the co-editor-in-chief of The Cancer Journal . [1]

He is also the co-author, with his daughter Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, of the autobiographical book, The Death of Cancer: After Fifty Years on the Front Lines of Medicine, a Pioneering Oncologist Reveals Why the War on Cancer Is Winnable—and How We Can Get There. [3] [17] [18] [15]

He was a participant in Ken Burns' 2015 PBS documentary Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies , [19] which was based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee. [9]

Personal life

DeVita married Mary Kay Bush, [7] with whom he had two children, Ted and Elizabeth. DeVita diagnosed his son Ted's aplastic anemia. Ted thereafter was placed in a sterile environment for his safety and died in 1980. [18] [20]

Ted's situation, and that of David Vetter, inspired the 1976 TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble starring John Travolta. [21] Elizabeth has written about the experience of losing her brother in The Empty Room. [18]

DeVita has been treated for prostate cancer. [3]

Awards

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of cancer chemotherapy</span>

The era of cancer chemotherapy began in the 1940s with the first use of nitrogen mustards and folic acid antagonist drugs. The targeted therapy revolution has arrived, but many of the principles and limitations of chemotherapy discovered by the early researchers still apply.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emil Frei</span> American physician and oncologist

Emil "Tom" Frei III was an American physician and oncologist. He was the former director and former physician-in-chief of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also the Richard and Susan Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Baselga</span> Spanish oncologist (1959–2021)

Josep Baselga i Torres, known in Spanish as José Baselga, was a Spanish medical oncologist and researcher focused on the development of novel molecular targeted agents, with a special emphasis in breast cancer. Through his career he was associated with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, and the Massachusetts General Hospital in their hematology and oncology divisions. He led the development of the breast cancer treatment Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody, that targets the HER2 protein, which is impacted in aggressive breast cancers.

Joseph Holland Burchenal was an American oncologist, and a winner of the 1972 Albert Lasker Award for Medical Research for his work on developing a chemotherapy for Burkitt's lymphoma. His research with George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion led to the creation of the leukemia treatment mercaptopurine. He worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and was a member of the presidential panel that initiated the U.S. federal government's War on Cancer. Burchenal died in Hanover, New Hampshire on March 8, 2006. He was 93 years old.

Emil J. Freireich was an American hematologist, oncologist, and cancer biologist. He was recognized as a pioneer in the treatment of cancer and use of chemotherapy and is often known as the father of modern leukemia therapy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Canellos</span> American oncologist and cancer researcher

George P. Canellos is an American oncologist and cancer researcher. His research career spans many decades, as well as several areas of therapeutic agents for the treatment of malignant diseases. He is perhaps most known for his work with Vincent T. DeVita in which he developed the combination chemotherapy CMF, which was one of the first combination therapies for breast cancer. The two also collaborated to create the MOPP regimen for Hodgkin's lymphoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yale Cancer Center</span> Hospital in Connecticut, United States

Yale Cancer Center (YCC) was founded in 1974 as a result of an act of Congress in 1971, which declared the nation's "war on cancer". It is one of a network of 56 Comprehensive Cancer Centers designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Currently directed by Dr. Eric Winer, the Cancer Center brings together the resources of the Yale School of Medicine (YSM), Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), and the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH).

Dennis Joseph Slamon, is an American oncologist and chief of the division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA. He is best known for his work identifying the HER2/neu oncogene that is amplified in 25–33% of breast cancer patients and the resulting treatment trastuzumab.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oncology</span> Branch of medicine dealing with, or specializing in, cancer

Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (ónkos), meaning "tumor", "volume" or "mass". Oncology is concerned with:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Sawyers</span> American physician-scientist (born 1959)

Charles L. Sawyers is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator who holds the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). HOPP is a program created in 2006 that comprises researchers from many disciplines to bridge clinical and laboratory discoveries.

<i>The Emperor of All Maladies</i> Book by Siddhartha Mukherjee on the history of cancer and oncology

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a book written by Siddhartha Mukherjee, an Indian-born American physician and oncologist. It was published on 16 November 2010 by Scribner.

VAMP regimen or VAMP chemotherapy is a four-drug combination chemotherapy regimen, used today in the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma. It was one of the earliest combination chemotherapy regimens, originally developed as a treatment for childhood leukemia by a group of researchers at the National Cancer Institute led by Emil Frei and Emil Freireich. The first clinical trial of VAMP began in 1961. Because it was the first time that four chemotherapeutic agents were used at once, the trial was highly controversial at its time. Although new combination chemotherapy regimens have replaced the use of VAMP in the treatment of childhood leukemia, VAMP is considered an important precursor to modern treatments, confirming the effectiveness of combination chemotherapy and leading to the use of combination chemotherapy regimens to treat other types of cancer.

High-dose chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant (HDC/BMT), also high-dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplant, was an ineffective treatment regimen for metastatic breast cancer, and later high-risk breast cancer, that was considered promising during the 1980s and 1990s. With an overall idea that more is better, this process involved taking cells from the person's bone marrow to store in a lab, then to give such high doses of chemotherapy drugs that the remaining bone marrow was destroyed, and then to inject the cells taken earlier back into the body as replacement. It was ultimately determined to be no more effective than normal treatment, and to have significantly higher side effects, including treatment-related death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Min Chiu Li</span> American physician

Min Chiu Li was a Chinese-American oncologist and cancer researcher. Li was the first scientist to use chemotherapy to cure widely metastatic, malignant cancer.

Eric P. Winer is a medical oncologist and clinical researcher specializing in breast cancer. He is director of Yale Cancer Center and president and physician-in-chief of Smilow Cancer Hospital Yale New Haven Health System, effective February 1, 2022. He also is Deputy Dean for Cancer Research at Yale School of Medicine. From 1997 to 2021, he was the Chief of the Breast Oncology Program at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Beginning in 2013, he held a range of institutional roles at Dana-Farber, including Chief of Clinical Development, the Thompson Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard SPORE in Breast Cancer. He also served as a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2022-2023 and became Chair of the Board in mid-June 2023. His career has been focused on breast cancer treatment and research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James F. Holland</span> American physician (1925–2018)

James Frederick Holland was an American physician and Distinguished Professor of Neoplastic Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Early in his career, he had worked for the National Cancer Institute and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jimmie C. Holland</span> American psychiatrist

Jimmie Coker Holland was a founder of the field of psycho-oncology. In 1977, she worked with two colleagues to establish a full-time psychiatric service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The program was one of the first of its kind in cancer treatment, and trained its psychologists to specialize in issues specific to people with cancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jung-Min Lee</span> South Korean-American medical oncologist and physician-scientist

Jung-Min Lee is a South Korean-American medical oncologist and physician-scientist focused on the early clinical drug development and translational studies of targeted agents in BRCA mutation-associated breast or ovarian cancer, high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer, and triple-negative breast cancer. She is a NIH Lasker Clinical Research Scholar and principal investigator in the Women's Malignancies Branch at the National Cancer Institute.

Patrick J. Loehrer is an American oncologist who is Indiana University Distinguished Professor, Joseph W. and Jackie J. Cusick Professor in Oncology, Professor of medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine; Director emeritus, Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Bayard Delafield Clarkson Sr. is an American physician, hematologist, and oncologist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., MD Honored by ASCO (press release)". Webwire. 12 June 2007. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  2. 1 2 "Dr. Vincent DeVita elected president of the voluntary board of the American Cancer Society". Yale News. November 19, 2012. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Thomas R., Tritton (2016). "Killing Cancer". Distillations. 2 (3): 44–45.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., MD Presented with a FREDDIE Award". Yale School of Medicine. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  5. ↑ "DeVita, Vincent Theodore, Jr.". Who's Who in Frontiers of Science and Technology. Chicago, Ill.: Marquis Who's Who. 1985. ISBN   9780837957029 . Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  6. 1 2 3 "National Cancer Institute Appointment of Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., as Director. July 9, 1980". The American Presidency Project. July 9, 1980. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Jacobs, Charlotte DeCroes (2010). Henry Kaplan and the story of Hodgkin's disease. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. pp. 185–190. ISBN   978-0804768665 . Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  8. ↑ Groopman, Jerome (March 10, 2016). "Cancer: A Time for Skeptics". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  9. 1 2 Mukherjee, Siddhartha (2011). The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer (1st Scribner ed.). New York: Scribner. ISBN   978-1439170915.
  10. ↑ Canellos, George P.; DeVita, Vincent T.; Gold, G. Lennard; Chabner, Bruce A.; Schein, Philip S.; Young, Robert C. (1 April 1976). "Combination Chemotherapy for Advanced Breast Cancer: Response and Effect on Survival". Annals of Internal Medicine. 84 (4): 389–92. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-84-4-389. PMID   1259283.
  11. ↑ "ASCO Presidents Through the Years". ASCO Post. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Greenberg, Daniel S. (1980). "A Conversation with Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., M.D.". The New England Journal of Medicine. 303 (17): 1014–1016. doi:10.1056/nejm198010233031744. PMID   7412849.
  13. 1 2 C., B. J. (19 August 1988). "DeVita is Leaving Cancer Institute for Sloan-Kettering". Science. 241 (4868): 899. doi:10.1126/science.241.4868.899-a.
  14. ↑ Altman, Lawrence K. (May 26, 1991). "Doctor Quits Post at Sloan-Kettering". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  15. 1 2 Piccini, Sara (Summer 2016). "Life on the Front Lines". William and Mary. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  16. ↑ "Awards, Appointments, Announcements". JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 96 (6): 433. 16 March 2004. doi: 10.1093/jnci/96.6.433 .
  17. ↑ Zugner, Abigail (November 30, 2015). "Review: Science and Politics Collide in 'The Death of Cancer'". New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  18. 1 2 3 Gross, Terry (October 28, 2015). "Oncologist Discusses Advancements In Treatment And The Ongoing War On Cancer". NPR.
  19. ↑ Bock, Eric (April 24, 2015). "NIH Scientists Featured in PBS Cancer Documentary". NIH Record. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  20. ↑ DeVita-Raeburn, Elizabeth (2017). "Cancer Special Report 2017: Cancer Trends in Diagnosis, Stages, Treatment, and Survival Rates". Everyday Health. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  21. ↑ McNees, Pat (August 2004). "The boy in the plastic bubble: Looking back at the boy looking out". Clinical Center News. Retrieved 11 July 2017.
  22. ↑ "1972 Lasker Awards". Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  23. ↑ "Celebrating Leadership in Public Health and Medicine Friends of the National Library of Medicine (FNLM)". NIH Medline Plus. 2009. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
  24. ↑ Gaudette, Renee (April 4, 2014). "Yale's Vincent DeVita named a fellow of American Association for Cancer Research Academy". Yale News. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.