Theodorescu elected to Institute of Medicine

Dan Theodorescu, M.D., Ph.D., director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, has been elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM).  Election to the IOM is one of the highest honors in health and medicine and recognizes individuals for their outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

“My election to the Institute of Medicine is humbling,” says Theodorescu. “To be recognized by IOM is a great honor and motivates me even more to find ways to treat this horrible disease.”

New IOM members are elected by current active members through a selective process that recognizes individuals who have made major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health.

Most recently, Theodorescu was senior author on a paper in the journal NATURE that identified Ral protein activation as a new target in the growth and spread of cancer and developed drug candidates to block its activation. This new class of drugs could have applications in lung, colon and pancreatic cancers.

Theodorescu, a professor of urology and pharmacology at the CU School of Medicine, is also a developer of the COXEN (CO eXpression ExtrapolatioN) bioinformatic principle of personalized therapy assignment in cancer. It is currently being tested in a national clinical trial through SWOG, a cancer research cooperative group, funded through the National Institutes of Health (www.clinicaltrials.gov , NCT02177695).

Richard D. Krugman, M.D., dean of the CU School of Medicine and the University’s vice chancellor of health affairs, who was elected to the IOM in 2005, said Theodorescu’s election recognizes him for leadership and the high quality of his research.

“Dan is making a difference every day,” Krugman said. “Survival rates for those who are diagnosed with advanced cancer are significantly higher at CU Cancer Center compared with national averages and that is because of the excellent care and research provided by Dan and his team.”