MD Anderson’s Mendelsohn joins the Baker Institute as senior fellow in health and technology policy

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Houston cancer pioneer Dr. John Mendelsohn was named the L.E. and Virginia Simmons Senior Fellow in Health and Technology Policy at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Wednesday. Mendelsohn, who is retiring Sept. 1 as president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, will conduct research on a range of policy issues that include health care costs and effectiveness and commercial applications of biomedical research. He will begin his duties at the Baker Institute next March after a sabbatical at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in Cambridge, Mass.

“It is very exciting for me to think that I’ll be back at a university that is a complete institution of learning, examining public policy and economics and history and even literature — I have some secret plans in that direction,” Mendelsohn told audience members who gathered for the announcement. Mendelsohn will remain on the MD Anderson faculty as co-director of the new Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy.

Former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, the honorary chair of the Baker Institute, praised Mendelsohn’s stature and accomplishments. “I am of course pleased from a professional point of view because of John’s outstanding reputation and qualifications,” he said. “But I am also personally pleased because he and Anne, and Susan and I, have enjoyed a friendship for the full time that the Mendelsohns have been here in Houston.”

“Dr. Mendelsohn’s appointment will enhance the Baker Institute’s health economics program by bringing together an internationally recognized leader and renowned practitioner in the medical field with top policy researchers shaping the public debate on health care choices and costs,” said Baker Institute Founding Director Edward Djerejian. “He will collaborate with scholars across Rice University and the Texas Medical Center. He will identify and evaluate discoveries of new technologies, therapeutics and best practices as well as promote policy recommendations to improve health outcomes both locally and globally.”

Mendelsohn’s position was made possible by a grant from L.E. and Virginia Simmons. ”We established the endowed fellow position to strengthen the Baker Institute’s already strong health policy research programs and to continue to support collaboration between Rice University and the Texas Medical Center,” L.E. Simmons, a Houston businessman and Rice trustee, said. ”We cannot express how pleased we are that Dr. John Mendelsohn will be the first person to hold the position. His influential stature in health care will have an immediate impact on health policy.”

JEFF FITLOW
Houston cancer pioneer Dr. John Mendelsohn was named the L.E. and Virginia Simmons Senior Fellow in Health and Technology Policy at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Wednesday.

President David Leebron emphasized the importance of Mendelsohn’s new position as a conduit for the interchange of ideas between the university and the neighboring medical center. It represents “the intersection of Rice and the Texas Medical Center,” he said. “That has been a central part of our strategy as a university. The Baker Institute has been a key element of that strategy. And this will strengthen its role as part of our engagement with the Texas Medical Center.”

Mendelsohn expressed an interest in a wide array of health policy issues. He has been involved in research on genome-targeted therapy, for instance, which raises policy questions about doctor-patient relationships and how best to allocate personal care. He also cited the growing importance of lifestyle and behavior in preventing disease, and the policy considerations that come into play as decision-makers balance individual rights with society’s ability to pay for health care.

Mendelsohn said the ongoing national debate over health care must take into account the concept of value, which he defined as outcomes divided by costs. “We’ve got to find a way to incentivize and build in the systems that provide health care more efficiently and reduce costs,” he told the Baker Institute audience.

As the institute’s senior fellow in health and technology policy, Mendelsohn will work closely with Vivian Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics, and other institute health policy researchers. The Baker Institute Health Economics Program studies ways in which economic incentives and government policies influence the quality and costs of health care. The program’s guiding philosophy is that society can deliver high quality medical care while controlling expenditures.

Mendelsohn said he will also explore how to devise ways to attract private investment to local biotechnology research. “I believe that Houston needs to take biotechnology as a fundamental basis for its economic development over the 21st century, along with the other great things going on here,” he said. He pointed to scientific achievements coming from Rice and medical advances at the Texas Medical Center and said, “If we miss that opportunity, we will have wasted an incredible resource for the community.”

Mendelsohn holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences magna cum laude from Harvard College and an M.D. cum laude from Harvard Medical School. His research over two decades pioneered the development of cancer therapies that target the aberrant genes that cause the disease. Before joining MD Anderson in 1996, Mendelsohn led and expanded the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He also held the Winthrop Rockefeller Chair in Medical Oncology and served for five years as co-head of the Program in Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Previously, Mendelsohn spent 15 years at the University of California, San Diego, where he was founding director of a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center.

To view a webcast of the June 29 ceremony, go to http://bakerinstitute.org/events/press-conference-health-and-technology-policy.