50 Most Influential Physician Executives – 2016
Rank: 48
Ronald DePinho
President, MD Anderson Cancer Center
An award-winning cancer researcher, Dr. Ronald DePinho has led discoveries that have paved the way for earlier detection of cancer, improved cancer care and have spurred new drug development. His research on cancer oncogenes and "tumor maintenance" has helped identify new therapeutic points of attack and new biomarkers that can help gauge patient response. Today, DePinho, 61, leads the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and is one of only five presidents since the hospital's founding in 1941. Under his leadership, the organization launched its well-known Moon Shots program—an effort to rapidly improve cancer survival rates through several ambitious, cancer-specific research projects. Before joining MD Anderson in September 2011, DePinho spent 14 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, where he was the founding director of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.