Dr. Joseph Schlessinger is the current chairman of the department of Pharmacology at Yale University, one of the most prestigious universities in the US. Before that he was the chairman of the department of Pharmacology at NYU (New York University) and also as the director of the NYU Skirball research facility.
Prof. Schlessinger is deemed the father of Signal Transduction, an area of research crucial 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 treating various cancers.
PubMed, the premier resource for academic publications lists 450 publications for Dr. Schlessinger. In 2003, the English newspaper The Guardian crafted 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 work, Prof. Schlessinger actively participates and starts biotechnology companies. His first company, which he co-founded with Dr. Axel Ullrich) was named Sugen, and developed 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 successful it was considered unethical not to give it to sick patients.
Later on Dr. Schlessinger co-founded Plexxikon, a company which aims, by using novel methods, to rapidly create multiple 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 ill people, and cam be said to make the world a healthier place.