How We May Benefit From the Work of One Dr. Joseph Schlessinger
Oct0
Dr. Joseph Schlessinger is the current chair of the dept. of Pharmacology at Yale University, one of the most admired universities in the US and the world in general. Previously he acted as the chair of the dept. of Pharmacology at NYU (New York University) and also as the director of the NYU Skirball research center.
Prof. Schlessinger is deemed the father of Signal Transduction, an area of investigation crucial 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 treating several types of cancers.
PubMed, the premier resource for academic publications lists 450 publications for Prof. Schlessinger. In 2003, the English newspaper The Guardian created a list of the greatest scientists of our era, or the “Giants of Science”, and placed Schlessinger at number 14, a great honor.
In addition to his academic work, Dr. Schlessinger is involved with and starts biotechnology companies. His first company, which he co-founded with Dr. Axel Ullrich) was named Sugen, and created a drug by the name of Sutent for treating 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 separate conditions simultaneously. The drug was so successful it was considered unethical not to give it to ill patients.
Later on Dr. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a company which attempts, by using state of the art methods, to quickly develop multiple types of drugs for the treatment of several diseases.
It is our hope that Dr. Schlessinger continues doing this ground-breaking research, as we all may benefit from it one day, it gives hope to sick people, and cam be said to make the world a healthier place.