DePinho named fourth president in history of MD Anderson
The University of Texas System Board of Regents has chosen Ronald DePinho, M.D., as the next president of MD Anderson. He will be known as president-designate until his new duties as MD Anderson’s president start September 1. DePinho will succeed John Mendelsohn, M.D., who announced in December his plans to step down after 15 years as the institution’s third full-time president.
A genetics researcher and professor at Harvard Medical School, DePinho is director of Boston’s Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. DePinho, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, previously held numerous faculty positions at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He received a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Fordham College and his medical degree with distinction in microbiology and immunology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. DePinho’s research interests are in the genetic aspects of cancer and the translation of such knowledge into clinical endpoints.
DePinho's wife, Lynda Chin, M.D., also will join the MD Anderson faculty. Chin, whose research interests are in cancer genomics and cancer biology, is the scientific director of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She also is professor of dermatology at the Harvard Medical School and the department of medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
