New Haven, CT, New Haven, Conn. — Dr. Richard L. Edelson, who has been named the inaugural Aaron B. and Marguerite Lerner Professor of Dermatology, is director of the Yale Cancer Center and an internationally acclaimed researcher with a special interest in the treatment and fundamental investigation of T-cell lymphomas.
Edelson has made fundamental contributions to the study of Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (CTCL), a disease caused by malignant T lymphocytes that affects the skin. He identified and characterized this cancer, and his research group has played a central role in deciphering the basic biologic properties of CTCL cells, in delineating the pathogenesis of the malignancy, and in developing effective therapies for it.
He and his research team were the first to successfully use anti-T-cell antibodies in the treatment of a lymphoma and have demonstrated that CTCL is an antigen-driven malignancy.
Along with his research team, Edelson devised and implemented the first FDA-approved selective immunotherapy for any cancer, a treatment now referred to as transimmunization. This treatment has been administered worldwide to patients with CTCL and has proven to be a safe and clinically effective cellular "vaccine" for CTCL patients.
Since 2003, Edelson has been director of the Yale Cancer Center, one of only 39 comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, and the only one in southern New England. There, he has worked to expand its clinical services, strengthen its finances and raise its visibility in the medical community. He played an important role in the establishment of the Smilow Cancer Center Hospital, a patient care facility that, when completed, will combine the resources of the Yale Cancer Center and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Edelson announced in January that he would step down as the center's director once a successor is named to return to full-time research and the chairmanship of the medical school's Department of Dermatology.
Edelson holds a B.S. from Hamilton College in New York and an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine. Before coming to Yale in 1986, he was head of the Immunobiology Group in Columbia University's Comprehensive Cancer Center and associate director of that institution's General Clinical Research Center.
While at Yale, he has served at various times as deputy dean for clinical affairs, director of the Cancer Center's Lymphoma Research Program, and a member of both the Yale-New Haven Hospital Board of Trustees and the Yale Medical Group Board of Governors. He is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and an honorary member of several international medical associations.
The new professorship is named in honor of Aaron B. Lerner, the founder of Yale's Department of Dermatology, and his wife, Marguerite R. Lerner, who was also a renowned dermatology researcher and children's book author.
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