David Agus
Agus at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2013
Born (1965-01-29) January 29, 1965 (age 59)[citation needed]
Alma materPrinceton University (1987)
University of Pennsylvania
Known for
  • Professor of Medicine and Engineering
  • Co-founder of Navigenics
  • Co-founder of Applied Proteomics
  • The End of Illness (2012)
  • A Short Guide to a Long Life (2014)
SpouseAmy Povich
Children2
Scientific career
Fields

David B. Agus (/ˈeɪgəs/) is an American physician, cancer researcher and author[1] who serves as a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering[2] and the Founding Director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine.[3] He is also the cofounder of several personalized medicine companies[4][5][6][7] and a contributor to CBS News on health topics.[8] He is also the author of four books.[9][10][11]

Agus's field of expertise is advanced cancer.[7] He has developed new cancer treatments with the aid of private foundations, as well as national agencies including the National Cancer Institute.[6] Agus has also served as chair of the Global Agenda Council on Genetics for the World Economic Forum,[12] and presently co-chairs the Global Health Security Consortium.[13]

Early life and education

He graduated cum laude in molecular biology from Princeton University in 1987 and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 1991.[14] He completed his residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital and completed his oncology fellowship training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.[7][15] He spent two years at the National Institutes of Health as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholar.[16][17]

Career

Agus has had a long and varied career. At the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, he leads a team researching prevention and treatments for cancer.[18] He also maintains an oncology practice to apply his team's research discoveries to the patients under his care.[19] At the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he was an attending physician in the Department of Medical Oncology and head of the Laboratory of Tumor Biology. He was also assistant professor of medicine at Cornell University Medical Center.[20]

As director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, he led a multidisciplinary team of researchers dedicated to the development and use of proteomic technologies to guide doctors in making health-care decisions tailored to individual needs. The center grew out of earlier clinical projects at Cedars-Sinai, where Agus served as an attending physician in oncology, which observed striking differences between the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in certain patients and their ability to respond to treatment.[21][22]

Agus also formerly served as Director of the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center, and as an attending physician in the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.[20] He was also an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

He is presently a professor of Medicine and Engineering at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and is the CEO and Founding Director of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine in Los Angeles and Oxford, England.[23][24] Agus chairs the Global Agenda Council (GAC) on Genetics for the World Economic Forum,[25] and speaks regularly at TEDMED,[26] the Aspen Ideas Festival[27] and the World Economic Forum.[25]

Agus's research has focused on the use of technology to model cancer and on new treatments for cancer.[28][29] He has published many scientific articles.[30]

Additional work and affiliations

He is a member of several scientific and medical societies, including the Council on Foreign Relations,[31] American Association for Cancer Research,[32] American College of Physicians,[33] American Society of Clinical Oncology.[34][35] Agus became a contributor for CBS News in 2013 and appears regularly on CBS This Morning and other CBS News platforms.[36]

He has founded and co-founded several companies including Oncology.com,[37] Navigenics (a personalized medicine company),[29] Applied Proteomics (together with Danny Hillis),[29] Sensei (wellness and lifestyle company, together with Larry Ellison),[38] Sensei Agriculture (an agriculture data and technology company together with Larry Ellison),[38] and Project Ronin (a cancer clinical intelligence company together with Larry Ellison).[39]

In 2021, Agus and the Ellison Institute launched Global Health Security Consortium (GHSC), a joint global effort with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and Sir John Bell and a team of scientists at the University of Oxford, focused on finding ways to track and treat COVID-19 and prevent future pandemics.[40][41] GHSC is co-chaired by Agus with Sirs Tony Blair and John Bell. The group launched the OneShot campaign in October 2022 to build global digital health infrastructure and promote life course disease prevention programs.[42]

Agus co-chaired the Fortune Brainstorm Health conference from its inception in 2016 until 2022,[43] and the inaugural Time100 Health Summit in 2019.[44] He has hosted public health conversations with individuals like Bill Clinton,[45] Joe Biden,[46] and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.[47]

Writing career

Agus' first book, The End of Illness, was published in 2012 [48] is a New York Times best seller and international best seller and was the subject of a PBS series.[49][9] His books A Short Guide to a Long Life[10] and The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health[50] are also New York Times and international bestsellers.[51]

Agus occasionally collaborated with co-writer Kristen Loberg on the recommendation of his publisher Simon & Schuster.[52] On March 6, 2023, it was reported that the passages Loberg contributed to Agus' book The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature's Lessons for a Long and Happy Life contained heavy plagiarism.[53] Loberg issued a public apology and Agus stated that she misled him during the writing process by claiming to use antiplagiarism software.[54] Agus reviewed earlier works co-written by Loberg and informed Simon & Schuster that she had previously engaged in plagiarism.[55] Other publishers and physicians who had worked with Loberg, including Penguin Random House, Sanjay Gupta, and David Perlmutter, subsequently discovered further plagiarism by her.[54]

The Book of Animal Secrets was initially set to be released on March 17, 2023, but sales were postponed at Agus' expense so that he could rewrite the book.[56] It is scheduled for release on December 5, 2023.[57]

Awards

Agus has received many honors and awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2017),[58] American Cancer Society Physician Research Award,[59][60][61] a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering Institute,[34][62] a CaP CURE Young Investigator Award[61] and the American Society of Clinical Oncology Fellowship Award,[63] the HealthNetwork Foundation's Excellence Award,[63] and the 2009 Geoffrey Beene Foundation's Rock Stars of Science, as seen in GQ.[64] In 2009, he was selected to serve as a judge for the first Biotech Humanitarian Award.[65][66]

Television show

Agus hosted a Paramount+ television show titled The Check Up with Dr. David Agus, which was broadcast starting in December 2022. In the show, Agus discussed different medical issues with celebrity guests who have experience with those health concerns.[67]

Perjeta clinical development

Agus and Mark Sliwkowski published the first studies with an antibody called 2C4 (pertuzumab or Perjeta), targeting the Her-2 molecule in breast and other cancers. This was the first drug that inhibited dimerization of receptors as its mechanism of action.[68] The mechanistic paper led to a phase 1 clinical trial led by Agus and further clinical studies in advanced breast cancer and other cancers.[69][70] In 2012, the FDA gave the first of several approvals of Perjeta for combination with trastuzumab and docetaxel for the treatment of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer who have not received prior anti-HER2 therapy or chemotherapy for metastatic disease. Perjeta was the first FDA approved drug that worked by inhibiting dimerization of receptors.[71][72]

Personal life

Agus is married to Amy Joyce Povich, actress and daughter of syndicated television talk show host Maury Povich. Her stepmother, Connie Chung, is a former CBS News anchor. His grandfather, Rabbi Jacob B. Agus, was a theologian and the author of several books on Jewish history and philosophy. Agus has two children.[73]

Miscellaneous

Agus appears in the 2006 documentary Who Needs Sleep?.[74] PBS released a documentary on Agus' first book The End of Illness in 2016.[75] Agus delivered a TEDMED 2009 lecture on "A new strategy in the war on cancer", which is one of the most watched cancer talks on TED.com,[76] and a TEDMED talk with Lance Armstrong in 2011.[77]

Agus was also the physician to Johnny Ramone during his battle with prostate cancer,[48] and other prominent individuals.[78] He was on the board of directors of the Biden Cancer Initiative[79] until it was closed when Joe Biden ran for president,[80] Thrive Global, ImageneAI,[81] Project Ronin,[82] Sensei, Sensei Ag, the National Library of Israel[83] and the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.[84][85]

Bibliography

References

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