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Dr. Joseph Schlessinger is the present chair of the dept. of Pharmacology at Yale University, one of the most admired universities in the US. Previously he acted as the chairman of the department of Pharmacology at New York University and the director of the NYU Skirball research center.

Prof. Schlessinger is considered the ‘father’ of Signal Transduction, an area of investigation integral for cancer research (and other fields). This research has already resulted in him receiving numerous awards, including the prestigious Dan David award (in 2006), and has led to the development of multiple drugs for treating several types of cancers.

PubMed, the premier resource for academic publications contains 450 publications for Dr. Schlessinger. In 2003, the UK newspaper The Guardian crafted 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 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 separate conditions concurrently. The drug was so potent it was considered immoral to deny it from sick patients.

Later on Dr. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a company which aims, by using novel methods, to rapidly develop numerous types of drugs for the treatment of several diseases.

It is our hope that Prof. Schlessinger continues doing his ground-breaking research, as we all may benefit from it one day, it gives hope to ill people, and cam be said to make the world a healthier place.