In 2012, he also joined Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy as the first L. E. and Virginia Simmons Senior Fellow in Health and Technology Policy.

"John Mendelsohn was a titan of the medical community who extended the lives of many threatened by cancer, a community leader who strove to make Houston a world class city, and a wonderful human being who spent a lifetime caring for others," said James A. Baker, III, 61st US Secretary of State and member of MD Anderson's Board of Visitors since 1974. "We will all miss his brilliant mind, thoughtful personality and dedication to the world that surrounded him. My wife, Susan, and I send John's wife, Anne, and their entire family our deepest sympathy."


Committed to Applying Science to Human Health

Before shifting his focus to leadership, Mendelsohn was a pioneering research scientist in demonstrating how growth factors regulate the proliferation of cancer cells through a process that activates receptors on the cell surfaces. In the early 1980s, he began researching ways to fight cancer by blocking epidermal growth factor receptors with Gordon Sato and other colleagues at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Their research led to development of the drug cetuximab (Erbitux™), which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in 2004 for treating advanced colorectal cancer and in 2006 for head and neck cancer.

In recognition of his outstanding academic achievements, Mendelsohn was elected to several of the nation's most prestigious organizations, including the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences (formerly the Institute of Medicine) and the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He also received numerous awards for his scientific work. Most recently, he was recognized with the 2018 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science and with the American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO) Distinguished Achievement Award. ASCO also named him as an Oncology Luminary in 2014. Mendelsohn was awarded the Research America's Builders of Science Award in 2013, the American Cancer Society's Medal of Honor for Clinical Research in 2011, the 2008 Dorothy P. Landon – AACR Prize for Translational Cancer Research, the 2006 Dan David Prize, and the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal in 2005. He also received the Sixth Annual American Association for Cancer Research Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research in 2012, the same year that his MD Anderson peers chose him for the Charles A. LeMaistre, M.D. Outstanding Achievement Award in Cancer.

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