Dr. Joseph Schlessinger is the present chair of the dept. of Pharmacology at Yale University, one of the most admired universities in the US and the world in general. Before that he was the chairman of the department of Pharmacology at NYU (New York University) and the director of the NYU Skirball research facility.
Prof. Schlessinger is regarded as the ‘father’ of Signal Transduction, an area of research integral for cancer research (and other fields). This research has already resulted in him getting numerous awards, including the esteemed Dan David award (in 2006), and has resulted in the development of multiple drugs for the treatment of several types of cancers.
PubMed, the premier resource for academic publications contains 450 publications for Prof. Schlessinger. In 2003, the British newspaper The Guardian created a list of the greatest scientists of our times, or the “Giants of Science”, and placed Schlessinger at #14, a great honor.
In addition to his academic research, Dr. Schlessinger actively participates and starts biotech companies. His first company, which he co-founded with Dr. Axel Ullrich) was called Sugen, and created a drug by the name of Sutent for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and gastrointestinal stromal tumor. This drug was approved by the FDA in 2006 in less than 6 months and is the first time that the FDA has made an exception and had approved a new drug for two different conditions concurrently. The drug was so effective it was considered unethical not to give it to ill patients.
Later on Dr. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a company which aims, by using novel ways, to quickly create numerous types of drugs for the treatment of multiple diseases.
It is our hope that Dr. Schlessinger continues doing this prolific research, as we all may gain from it one day, it gives hope to sick people, and cam be said to make the world a healthier place.
