How We May Benefit From the Work of One Dr. Joseph Schlessinger
Dr. Joseph Schlessinger is the current chair of the department 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 department of Pharmacology at NYU (New York University) and the director of the NYU Skirball research facility.
Prof. Schlessinger is deemed the ‘father’ of Signal Transduction, an area of research integral for cancer research (and other fields). This research has already resulted in him winning numerous awards, including the prestigious Dan David award (in 2006), and has led to 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 English newspaper The Guardian created a list of the greatest scientists of our era, or the “Giants of Science”, and placed Schlessinger at #14, a great honor.
In addition to his academic work, Prof. Schlessinger actively participates and starts biotechnology companies. His first company, which he co-founded with Dr. Axel Ullrich) was called Sugen, and created a drug called 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 separate conditions concurrently. The drug was so potent it was considered immoral not to give it to sick patients.
Later on Dr. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a company which aims, by using novel methods, to quickly develop numerous types of drugs for treating several diseases.
It is our hope that Prof. Schlessinger continues doing this ground-breaking 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.