Arizonan to Direct UCI Cancer Center
Following an 18-month nationwide search, UC Irvine has chosen Dr. Frank Louis Meyskens Jr., a skin cancer specialist at the University of Arizona, to become the first permanent director of the university’s cancer center.
Meyskens, 42, now heads the University of Arizona’s Cancer Prevention and Control Center in Tucson and is expected to assume his new position sometime after Jan. 1, 1989, succeeding Dr. Philip De Saia.
“I’m looking forward to the excitement of leading a cancer center effort that will provide good clinical care in the Orange County area,” Meyskens said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Meyskens said he was not intimidated by the move to an area known for its sun worshipers.
“I don’t try to discourage people from living in the sun,” he said. “I just try to teach them how to do it intelligently. We’ll launch a very intensive program when we get there.”
On the subject of the possible relationship between stress and cancer, Meyskens said reducing stress “doesn’t appear to play a role in cancer treatment, but it may play a role in cancer prevention.”
The appointment of Meyskens, whose specialty is a potentially fatal form of skin cancer called melanoma, was hailed by other authorities in the field.
“Dr. Meyskens is a nationally recognized expert in chemo-prevention of human tumors, and he is an outstanding medical oncologist,” said Dr. Richard Steckel, director of UCLA’s Johnsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We are delighted to have him with us in the area.”
“He’s a well known scientist and an excellent choice,” said Dr. Brian Henderson, director of USC’s Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Center. “He’s built a very fine multidisciplinary research program at Arizona. I would think he would be able to do the same thing at Irvine.”
In an article in the February issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, Meyskens reported on the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer with a synthetic derivative of Vitamin A. Meyskens said the vitamin treatment was successful “in suppressing, and in one case, obliterating a very advanced case of skin cancer.”
Non-melanoma skin cancer is “not a lethal disease in general,” he said, claiming 2,000 deaths a year in the United States. However, malignant melanoma--a tumor of skin pigment cells--is responsible for an estimated 9,000 deaths a year nationally, Meyskens said.
