Ask the Experts: How best to treat recurrent glioma.

Abstract

Victor Alan Levin received his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin (1966), was a Staff Associate in the Experimental Therapeutics branch of the National Cancer Institute (1967–1969) and completed a residency and fellowship in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (1969–1972). After residency, he was recruited to the University of California, San Francisco in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Neurology and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and the Clinical Pharmacology program. He was promoted to Professor of Neuro-oncology in the Department of Neurological Surgery and Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1988, he moved to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neuro-oncology to help develop multidisciplinary programs in neuro-oncology, pain management, cancer rehabilitation and cancer psychiatry. He was a founder of the Society for Neuro-Oncology and served as its first president between 1995 and 1997. He retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center in November 2009 and moved back to California where he works part-time at a Kaiser Permanente hospital and still sees neuro-oncology patients weekly. In addition to these accomplishments, he has published 375 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, editorials and books, including the multidisciplinary textbook, ‘Cancer in the Nervous System’. In his career, Dr Levin has received numerous awards including the gold medal award for extraordinary achievement (Society for Neuro-Oncology).