Francis Ali-Osman, MD, FACS, DSc, professor emeritus in the Department of Neurosurgery, was honored among the 2019 Distinguished Emeriti Faculty of Duke School of Medicine at a dinner on June 4, 2019.
Ali-Osman is a pioneer of brain tumor research, and has made seminal contributions to the field over the course of his noteworthy career.
During graduate school in Germany, Ali-Osman distinguished himself in the little-known area of tumor stem cells. He was recruited to University of California, San Francisco, and continued this work and was the first to clone brain tumor stem cells in glass capillary tubes in 1988. "Most importantly, there was a lot of effort to take tumors from patients, bring them to the lab, grow them in such a way that they emulated the tumor in the patient, and be able to test drugs on them, " he says. "And also, to use this technology to discover new drugs."
During his time at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Ali-Osman discovered two gene variants that enable brain tumors to develop drug resistance.
Arriving at Duke in 2003, he began to develop drugs to inhibit these particular proteins.
For 10 years, Ali-Osman co-directed SPORE along with Duke Neurosurgery chair John Sampson, MD, PhD. SPORE is one of the most prestigious science awards of the National Cancer Institute.
In 2016, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the National Cancer Advisory Board.
Watch the video to learn more about this remarkable researcher.