St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital veteran Dr. Michael Kastan has been named the new executive director of the Duke Cancer Institute.
Kastan, a cancer scientist, is currently the director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at St. Jude in Memphis, Tennessee. He has directed the cancer center since 2004 and under his tenure, St. Jude became the only pediatric hospital designated by the National Cancer Institute as a comprehensive cancer center.
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The Duke Cancer Institute was launched last November with the goal of bringing education, cancer research and patient care under a single entity. Kastan said in a statement that the Durham, North Carolina center could become a national model for how cancer programs will be structured.
“It is exactly what cancer medicine should be about,” Kastan said. “It’s the merging and strategic oversight of a seamless structure, including everything from basic research to patient care, all coordinated as part of a continuum.”
Kastan said he will also work to further develop the clinical research mission of the cancer institute and collaborate with faculty and clinical research staff in designing, implementing, monitoring and reporting clinical research. He added that he also hopes to engage the expertise of university scientists outside the typical cancer disciplines.
“I have followed Mike Kastan’s spectacular career for years, and I’m delighted that he will be the inaugural executive director of the DCI,” said Dr. Nancy Andrews, dean of the Duke University School of Medicine. “He is very highly regarded and, importantly, he values all of our missions — patient care, innovation based on science and training of the next generation of leaders.”
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Kastan is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. He earned a degree in chemistry in 1977 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kastan earned his medical degree from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and trained in pediatrics at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Kastan worked at Johns Hopkins until 1998 when he joined St. Jude as chairman of the department of hematology/oncology.