Vincent DeVita Jr, MD

Dr. Vincent DeVita, the Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medicine at the Yale Cancer Center and Professor of Epidemiology and of Public Health, was the Director of the Yale Cancer Center from 1993 to 2003. He spent the early part of his career at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and in 1980, the President of the United States appointed him director of the NCI and the National Cancer Program, a position he held until 1988. From 1988 until be returned to Yale in 1993, he was Physician-in-Chief and Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a member of the Program of Molecular Pharmacology. Dr. DeVita has earned international recognition for his accomplishments as a pioneer in the field of Oncology. While at the NCI, he developed combination chemotherapy programs curative for Hodgkin's disease and diffuse large cell lymphomas. He developed the four-drug combination, known by the acronym MOPP, which increased the cure rate for patients with advanced Hodgkin's disease from nearly zero to over 70%. In addition, in collaboration with Dr. George Canellos, he developed the combination chemotherapy CMF, which still remains a useful therapy for breast cancer. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the College of William and Mary in 1957. He was awarded his M.D. degree with distinction from the George Washington University School of Medicine in 1961. Dr. DeVita is the author or co-author of more than 450 scientific articles. He is one of the three editors of "Cancer: Principles & Practice of Oncology", in its 11th edition, and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Cancer Journal. Dr. DeVita, along with his daughter, Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn wrote a personal memoir entitled "The Death of Cancer: After Fifty Years on the Front Lines of Medicine, a Pioneering Oncologist Reveals Why the War on cancer is Winnable--and How We Can Get There", published in 2015.