Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr.

Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr.
Born (1933-04-01) April 1, 1933 (age 91)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma materHarvard College
Duke University
Harvard School of Public Health
AwardsCharles S. Mott Prize
Scientific career
InstitutionsNational Cancer Institute

Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr. (born April 1, 1933) is an American physician and cancer researcher. Born in Boston,[1] he received an A.B. from Harvard College, an M.D. from Duke University, and an M.Sc. in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his medical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He then joined the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health in 1962 as a commissioned officer of the U.S. Public Health Service, becoming the founding Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in 1995. He stepped down from this position in 2012 to become a senior investigator and advisor to the National Cancer Institute.

One of Fraumeni's research accomplishments was the identification in 1969 with Frederick Pei Li of four families with an increased susceptibility to multiple forms of cancer in children and young adults.[2] Tracing these families and 20 others for twenty years[3] led to the characterization of what became known as Li–Fraumeni syndrome and the discovery in 1990 of inherited mutations of the tumor suppressor gene, p53, as the underlying mechanism in most affected families.[4]

  1. ^ Hoover, Robert N. (2013). "A Conversation with Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr". Epidemiology. 24 (6): 929–933. doi:10.1097/EDE.0b013e3182a56987. PMID 24076995. S2CID 238402678.
  2. ^ Li FP, Fraumeni JF Jr. Soft-tissue sarcomas, breast cancer, and other neoplasms. A familial syndrome? Ann Intern Med 1969:71:747-752.
  3. ^ Li FP, Fraumeni JF Jr., Mulvihill JJ, et al. A cancer family syndrome in twenty-four kindreds. Cancer Res 1988:48:5358-5362.
  4. ^ Malkin D, Li FP, Strong LC, Fraumeni, JF Jr., Nelson CE, Kim DH, Kassel J, Gryka MA, Bischoff FZ, Tainsky, MA, Friend SH. Germ line p53 mutations in a familial syndrome of breast cancer, sarcomas, and other neoplasms. Science 1990:250: 1233–1238.