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Dr. Ben Neel
Research Director, The Princess Margaret
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| Dr. Ben Neel |
“There’s been an excitement in the cancer domain. We really are in a golden age of cancer biology and cancer medicine, that’s informed by the human genome and all the major advancements in molecular and cellular biology. It’s important to remember that twenty-five to thirty years ago we knew virtually nothing about cell biology or about how cancer cells are different. And now we know a great deal more and we’re learning more everyday. This is an opportunity to make major advances. And I think that this is one of the few places worldwide that can do this efficiently and well.”
That belief in PMH and OCI led Dr. Ben Neel to leave Harvard Medical School for the post of OCI Director in January 2007. “I chose to come here because I wanted to make a greater impact on the research community than just the research outcomes from my own lab,” says Dr. Neel. “It’s very clear that the basic science advances that have occurred in the last ten years and that are occurring right now, need to be translated efficiently to patients through translational research. [This] was a unique opportunity to be able to mobilize the resources to bring basic science to cancer medicine.”
Like many others in the field of cancer research and care, Dr. Neel is driven by a personal connection to the illness. The grandfather for whom he is named died of cancer before his birth. His widow, Ida Dortch, helped raise her grandson, and the pair became quite close. Ida died of cancer when Dr. Neel was just 17. Already fascinated by biology, cancer research now had a personal face to drive him forward.
Since then, Dr. Neel has made many significant cancer research contributions, including, early in his career, being the first to demonstrate how slowly transforming RNA tumour viruses cause cancer. He is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of cell signaling, and holds a number of scientific patents. In 2003, he was awarded a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health in the US. He obtained his MD from Cornell University Medical School and his PhD from The Rockefeller University. Before being recruited to OCI, he was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Cancer Biology program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston. |
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