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Scott A. Waldman, M.D., Ph.D., Samuel M.V. Hamilton Family Professor of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, has been named chair of Jefferson’s newly formed Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Dr. Waldman, a member of Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center, currently is director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College.

Much of Dr. Waldman’s current research is aimed at detecting the recurrence of advanced colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Armed with a five-year, $5.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, he is leading a clinical trial of more than 2,000 patients with colorectal cancer to see if a blood test that he and his co-workers developed and which is based on detecting the protein that causes traveler’s diarrhea is a better early detection system than current methods. In a previous NCI-supported trial, he and his colleagues showed that testing for the protein was an effective tool in determining the extent of a patient’s colorectal cancer, particularly whether or not it had spread to the lymph nodes.

Dr. Waldman joined the faculty at Jefferson in 1990, and was assistant professor of pharmacology and medicine from 1990 to 1993. He was associate professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology and medicine from 1993 to 1998. He has been director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology since 1997, and was appointed Samuel M.V. Hamilton Professor of Medicine in 1998. He has been professor of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology since 2000.
From 1991 to 1997, he was medical director of the Clinical Research Unit at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. He currently directs Jefferson’s M.D.-Ph.D. program.

“Scott Waldman’s expertise and experience in pharmacology and research are widely recognized at Jefferson and across the country,” says Jefferson Medical College Dean Thomas J. Nasca, M.D. “He is uniquely qualified to lead this new department.”

Dr. Waldman has lectured and published widely, including in such prestigious journals as the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Much of his research is supported by the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Waldman has received many honors and awards, including a PHARMA Foundation Faculty Development Award in Basic Pharmacology, the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust Award and the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation Award. He is a   Diplomate of the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology and a fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology.

Dr. Waldman is a member of several scientific societies, and has held positions in
the American College of Pharmacology and in the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, serving as its president from 2000 to 2001. He was a regent of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology from 2000 to 2004.

He has been a member of many peer review panels and study sections for the National Institutes of Health, and has been a reviewer for such journals as the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Cancer, Cancer Research and Circulation. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Cancer Therapeutics, and Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management.

He received a bachelor of science degree in biology from the State University of New York at Albany in 1975. He earned a Ph.D. in anatomy from Jefferson Medical College in 1980. He received a doctor of medicine degree in 1987 from Stanford University School of Medicine.