Richard Pestell

Richard G. Pestell, M.D., Ph.D. is an internationally renowned expert in oncology and endocrinology who currently serves as the Director of the Kimmel Cancer Center, Chairman of the Department of Cancer Biology and Associate Dean of Cancer Programs at Jefferson Medical College, and Vice President of Oncology Services at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Education and Early Career
A native of Australia, Pestell received his M.B.B.S. in 1981 from the University of Western Australia, and his M.D. and Ph.D. in 1991 and 1997, respectively, from the University of Melbourne. He was a postdoctoral clinical and research fellow in medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a postdoctoral research fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School, respectively, from 1991 to 1993.

Following his postdoctoral research, Pestell was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, Pestell left Chicago to become an associate professor, and later professor, in the Department of Medicine and Developmental and Molecular Biology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, New York. Pestell would later serve as Chair of the Division of Endocrine-Dependent Tumor Biology at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center from 2000 to 2002. In 2002, Dr. Pestell was named Director of the Lombardi Cancer Center at the Georgetown University Medical Center. During this tenure, Pestell also served as Associate Vice President of the Georgetown University Medical Center, and the Francis L. and Charlotte Gragnani Chair of the Department of Oncology at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. While serving as Director of the Lombardi Cancer Center, Pestell led the successful effort for renewal of its National Cancer Institute designation, and founded the Capital Breast Care Center with Andrea Jung of the Avon Foundation.

Accomplishments
In 2003, Pestell, along with other researchers from Georgetown University, identified a gene responsible for the spread of secondary, or metastatic cancer throughout the body. The study found that the migration of cancer cells throughout the body that caused these secondary tumors could be halted by knocking out a gene which controls production of a chemical called cyclin.

In 2007, Pestell, along with other researchers from the Kimmel Cancer Center, discovered that a protein known as AKT1 may play an important role in the spread of about one quarter of all breast cancers. Their studies showed that this protein could be a potential target for new drugs to stop or slow the growth and progression of breast cancer.

In 2010, Pestell, again with other researchers from the Kimmel Cancer Center, provided definitive proof for the long suspected theory that inflammation in the breast is key to the development and progression of breast cancer. Their studies demonstrated that deactivating this inflammation selectively within the breast reduced the growth of the breast cancer stem cells responsible for tumor development, and stopped breast cancer from forming.

Pestell is also the author of more than 220 research papers and reviews and sits on the editorial boards of a number of journals.