Max Essex, chairman of the department of cancer biology at Harvard University's School of Public Health and of the Harvard AIDS Institute, has been appointed the first Mary Lasker Professor of Health Sciences.
The school established the Mary Woodard Lasker Professorship and Research Program in December in honor of the crusader and supporter of medical research who was a primary force in the establishment of the National Heart Institute, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, and the National Cancer Institute.
Essex, 50, has focused his work on the relationship of the immune system to cancer and infectious diseases. His research, which earned him an Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award in 1986, provided the first link between viruses and suppression of immune defenses against disease. This research, including his work on HTLV (Science, 220:859-62, 1983), helped lead to the identification of the ...
