Bert Howard O’Neil, MD, has been named the inaugural Joseph W. and Jackie J. Cusick Professor of Oncology and a Professor of Medicine at the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine, in Indianapolis. He is also the Phase I Director and Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program at the IU Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, and he will represent the cancer
center on the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium steering committee.
As the Phase I Director, Dr. O’Neil will oversee phase I clinical trials for all areas of cancer treatment. Dr. O’Neil’s primary area of expertise is in gastrointestinal cancers, with a particular concentration on pancreas, colorectal, and hepatocellular carcinomas. He also has considerable expertise in targeting new drugs to specific molecular targets on tumors.
“Finding new and better agents to treat cancer, particularly gastrointestinal cancers, is a major focus of the IU Simon Cancer Center,” said Patrick J. Loehrer, MD, Director of the IU Simon Cancer Center. “There is no one that I know in the country who is better suited for this role than Dr. O’Neil.”
Dr. O’Neil was most recently an Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Gastrointestinal Malignancies Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also was the Medical Director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center’s clinical protocol office where he designed and conducted clinical and translational studies.
Dr. O’Neil earned his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he completed his internal medicine residency and fellowship in hematology/oncology at the University of California, San Francisco. ■
