Leading cancer researcher and Regents professor David Alberts has been named the new director of the Arizona Cancer Center at the University of Arizona.

Alberts, who has been director of the Cancer Prevention and Control program within the center since 1989, served as deputy director of the whole cancer center between 1988 and 1996, following the death of former director Dr. Sydney Salmon. A UA professor since 1975, Alberts teaches medicine, pharmacology, nutritional science, and public health, and was the associate dean for research at the UA College of Medicine between 1996 and 2002.

Beginning Jan. 1, Alberts will fill the opening left by former director Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, a renowned developer of cancer drugs. Von Hoff left the cancer center in 2003 to become executive vice president of the Translational Genomics Research Institute. UA pathologist Raymond Nagle served as acting director in the interim.

Under Alberts' leadership, the CPC program grew in scope and prestige; it is now the largest program within the Arizona Cancer Center, housing some 60 faculty members from 23 academic departments and six colleges at UA.

Alberts is the principal investigator on two major project grants at the CPC, one on colon cancer prevention and the other on the chemoprevention of skin cancer. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, these two grants have served as the centerpieces of cancer prevention research in Tucson, generating many publications and spin-off research projects for the university.

Alberts is well-known and respected in the national cancer research community for his multi-phased view of cancer prevention and treatment and development of prevention strategies for breast, cervix, colon, prostate, and skin cancer. In 2000, he was named one of the top three NIH-funded clinical researchers in the U.S. by the journal Science, and in 2004 he received the Distinguished Career Award from the American Society for Preventive Oncology.

Before coming to UA, Alberts served on the faculty of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the National Institutes of Health's Baltimore Cancer Research Center. Dr. Alberts received his M.D. in 1966 from the University of Virginia School of Medicine.

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For more information:

"Arizona Cancer Center names new director," Arizona Daily Star, 12/15/2004

"UA veteran heads Cancer Center," Tucson Citizen, 12/14/2004

Arizona Cancer Center