Chu to Deliver YCC Calabresi Endowed Lecture: Drug Development at Yale: Past, Present, Future
For Immediate Release
Date: 4/20/06
Contact: Janet Rettig Emanuel, (203) 432-2157, janet.emanuel@yale.edu
New Haven, Conn. — The first annual Paul Calabresi, M.D. Memorial Lecture of Yale Cancer Center (YCC) will be presented on April 25 at 8:30 a.m. in Fitkin Amphitheater, 310 Cedar Street. Edward Chu, M.D., chief of Medical Oncology at YCC will speak on "Drug Development at Yale Cancer Center: Past, Present and Future," as a tribute to Calabresi's legacy.
The annual lectureship at YCC is endowed by the Calabresi family, friends, and colleagues in memory of Paul Calabresi, M.D., M.C.A.P., a Yale University (B.A. '51) and School of Medicine (M.D. '55) graduate and former member of the faculty who has been referred to as the father of medical oncology. Instrumental in the section of medical oncology at Yale, at the time of his death in 2003 Calabresi was Chair of the YCC Advisory Board.
“Dr. Calabresi was one of the true pioneers of cancer pharmacology and cancer drug development, and I was privileged to know him both on a professional and close personal level. He was my friend, colleague, and mentor,” said Chu. “As Dr. Calabresi was the first academic Chief of Medical Oncology in the U.S. and the head of the Division of Pharmacology and Chemotherapy at the Yale School of Medicine, Yale Cancer Center is honored to pay tribute to him with this memorial lectureship.”
Calabresi, an internationally recognized authority on the pharmacology of anticancer agents, received the Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award in Therapeutics from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and the St. George Medal for distinguished volunteer service from the American Cancer Society.
He was appointed Chair of the National Cancer Advisory Board by President George Bush in 1991 and to the President's Cancer Panel by President Clinton in 1995. In 1998, President and Mrs. George Bush invited Dr. Calabresi to serve on the Steering Committee for the National Dialogue on Cancer.
Calabresi was a member of the Board of Overseers at Tufts University School of Medicine, and served as the Director of the Brown-Tufts Cancer Center. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and a Master of the American College of Physicians.
He was a member and an officer of more than a dozen professional societies and served prominently on committees and study sections of the National Cancer Institute and on the editorial boards of eight journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine. Calabresi authored or edited over 200 manuscripts and books on the pharmacology of antineoplastic agents and the management of cancer.
Born in Milan, Italy in 1930, he was the son of the late Dr. Massimo Calabresi and Professor Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi. His family, active in Italy in the anti-fascist resistance, fled to the United States in September 1939.
Along with his former colleagues and friends, this memorial lectureship is endowed in his honor by his surviving family: his wife Celia Treadway Gow Calabresi; two sons, Steven Calabresi of Brookline, Mass., and Peter Calabresi of Baltimore, Md.; a daughter, Janice Calabresi Maggs of Arlington, Va.; a brother, Guido Calabresi of Woodbridge, Conn.; and eight grandchildren.