January 22, 2004
DFCI physician-in-chief emeritus receives prestigious award for his historic contributions to the treatment of pediatric leukemia
Emil Frei III, MD
DFCI Physician-in-Chief Emeritus Emil Frei III, MD, has been selected as one of four physician-scientists to receive the prestigious 2003 Pollin Prize in Pediatric Research. The four were chosen for their contributions to the landmark advances in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of pediatric cancer that was once incurable, but now has a 75 percent survival rate.
Every year, ALL is diagnosed in at least 2,000 American children, most commonly between ages of two and six.
In addition to Frei, the other winners of the Pollin Prize are Emil J. Freireich, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; Donald Pinkel, MD, of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and the University of Southern California; and James Holland, MD, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. The four have received many individual honors for their research and together earned the Lasker Award in 1972.
The Pollin Prize, funded by the Linda and Kenneth Pollin Foundation and administered by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, consists of a $100,000 award to the recipients and a $100,000 fellowship stipend to be awarded by the recipients to a young investigator at one of their institutions who is working in a related area.
