Yale Bulletin and Calendar

June 15, 2001Volume 29, Number 32Two-Week Issue



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Physical chemist from NYU
is named chair of pharmacology

Physical chemist Joseph Schlessinger is joining the Yale faculty as chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine.

Schlessinger was most recently professor, chair of pharmacology and director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University (NYU).

He comes to Yale with significant research experience in the area of signal transduction -- all the circuits inside the machines that allow cells to communicate with the environment. He plans to cultivate signal transduction research at Yale.

"Dr. Schlessinger is an exemplary researcher and a distinguished leader in pharmacology and drug discovery," says School of Medicine Dean Dr. David Kessler. "We are thrilled that he has brought his world-class scientific skills and vast knowledge of pharmacology to Yale."

Schlessinger says drug discovery is much more knowledge-based than in the past and he plans to implement a new way of discovering drugs at Yale. "You really have to know the basic fundamental processes or molecular mechanisms of a drug in order to improve it," he says. "My focus is not so much on drug discovery, but on defining molecular pathways inside the cell. Many of these pathways become impaired in diseases and fixing these could lead to improved targets."

He adds, "Signal transduction has an impact on many other departments, such as neurobiology, immunology and microbiology, allowing for exciting multidisciplinary research opportunities."

Schlessinger plans to fill several key positions in pharmacology by recruiting scientists who work in structural, molecular and cellular biology to create a new generation of pharmacologists.

"I'm going to promote this field of signal transduction to the best of my abilities," Schlessinger says. "My goal is to make Yale one of the main centers of this important field of modern biology in about five years."

At NYU, Schlessinger boosted the school's pharmacology department to national prominence. Before that, he was research director of Rorer Biotech, Inc. for five years and co-founded Sugen, Inc. in 1991.

Schlessinger serves on the advisory boards of journals such as Cell, EMBO Journal, Molecular Cell, Protein Engineering, Molecular Cell Biology and Journal of Cell Biology.

After receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry ,from The Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, in 1974, he was a postdoctoral associate at the School of Applied Engineering Physics and Department of Physics at Cornell University from 1974 to 1976. He then became visiting scientist at the Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. In 1978 he was appointed associate professor in the Department of Chemical Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He later became the Ruth and Leonard Simon Professor of Cancer Research at the Weizmann Institute.

Schlessinger has published research articles in numerous journals and delivered many special lectures. His many prizes and honors include the Sara Leedy Prize, The Hestrin Prize, the Drew-Ciba Prize, the Distinguished Service Award of Miami Nature Biotechnology, the Taylor Prize and election to the National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (see related story).


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MEDICAL SCHOOL NEWS

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Skeleton Crew

Hail, Hale!


OBITUARIES

Campus Notes



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