Samuel Broder, MD
Samuel Broder is the former head of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the largest and most important Agency for cancer research in the world. President Ronald Reagan appointed Dr. Broder to serve as Director of the NCI in 1989, and he held the position for six years. While at the NCI, he also oversaw the development of numerous anti-cancer therapeutic agents, such as TAXOL®. As NCI Director, Dr. Broder helped launch a number of large-scale clinical trials related to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, and he inaugurated the highly successful SPORE Program.
Dr. Broder joined the Celera Corporation at its founding in 1998, as the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer, and helped advance the human genome project, i.e., the elucidation of the 3 billion letters of code that make up human DNA. His most recent operational position was as SVP, Health Sector, Intrexon Corp, with responsibilities for gene therapy and synthetic biology. He has served on numerous BODs and SABs.
Dr. Broder spent his entire career in translational medicine, and his laboratory interests have included antiretroviral therapy, the relationship between immunodeficiency disorders and cancer, the human genome, and the proteomics of cancer cells. In the mid-1980s, in response to the AIDS pandemic, he focused his attention on HIV-1/AIDS. His laboratory played a major role in developing the first 3 agents approved by FDA specifically to treat the AIDS virus. These are the novel nucleosides Retrovir® (AZT), Videx® (ddI), and HIVID® (ddC).
Dr. Samuel Broder graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor in 1970. He did an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, and then did subspecialty training in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda. He is the author or co-author of over 340 scientific publications, and is an inventor on many patents. He has received numerous scientific awards related to his research in cancer and AIDS. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.