Charles A. LeMaistre, the second president of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, was born in Alabama in 1924. He attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa as a pre-med student and graduated in 1943 with a B.A. In 1947, he obtained his M.D. from Cornell University in New York and served a medical internship and residency at New York Hospital in 1948 and 1949. He then finished a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship in infectious diseases at Cornell.

After joining the faculty at Cornell, Dr. LeMaistre was recruited for the first unit of the U.S. Public Health Service’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. During this two-year assignment, while his family and friends thought he was an instructor of medicine at Cornell – and he was – he also handled several highly confidential assignments, including research dealing with defense against possible germ warfare and a secret mission to contain a strange pulmonary epidemic among almost 500 children on a Native American reservation. At the same time he was working secretly for the government, at Cornell he worked on developing tetracycline-type antibiotics and other drugs to treat patients with tuberculosis and diseases of the chest.

In 1954, Dr. LeMaistre accepted an academic appointment at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia and three years later became chairman of its new Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health and coordinator of clinics at Grady Memorial Hospital. After five years at Emory, in 1959 Dr. LeMaistre accepted a faculty position at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, where he eventually became associate dean.

During his time in Dallas, Dr. LeMaistre served as the youngest member of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, which in 1964 issued its landmark report identifying cigarettes as a major cause of lung cancer. He already had observed the adverse effects of tobacco among his patients. When he saw how a physician can affect public policy, Dr. LeMaistre dedicated himself to making a difference about smoking. Later in his life, he chaired the 1981 National Conference on Smoking on Health and a 1985 International Summit on Smoking Control Leaders. While national president of the American Cancer Society in 1986, he traveled widely to promote news about cancer prevention and how many malignant diseases could be avoided if people never used tobacco.

In 1966, Dr. LeMaistre moved to Austin, Texas, to accept the position of vice chancellor for health affairs of The University of Texas System. He quickly advanced to executive vice chancellor, then chancellor-elect and, from 1971 until 1978, he served as the system’s chancellor – the first physician in the University’s history to hold that post. As chancellor, Dr. LeMaistre was chairing a search committee for a new president of M.D. Anderson in the spring of 1978, when he was encouraged by several faculty leaders at the hospital to accept the position himself. He relinquished chairmanship of the search committee, went through the application process, and was selected to be the next M.D. Anderson president.

Dr. LeMaistre served M.D. Anderson as President for eighteen years. Under his leadership, the institution made important advances in patient care, research, and education. M. D. Anderson became a world leader in developing cost-saving outpatient cancer services, including such devices as portable drug infusion pumps, that have revolutionized the way chemotherapy is administered. Dramatic improvement in multidisciplinary therapies has meant less radical surgery and increasing patient survival. The bone marrow transplantation program was expanded to be the most extensive in the world, with more than 500 marrow and stem cell transplants performed annually in 1996. At M.D. Anderson, innovative gene therapy techniques for patients with ovarian, breast, lung, and head and neck cancers and primary brain tumors were designed during Dr. LeMaistre’s presidency.

Research achievements included: interdisciplinary collaboration to develop the leading program in chemoprevention, which uses chemical compounds to halt or reverse the cancer process; extensive research to understand how and why certain cancers spread to other parts of the body and expanding efforts to design methods to predict which cancers will metastasize as well as to prevent metastasis; important findings showing how ultraviolet light can damage the immune system, leaving many people vulnerable to numerous diseases in addition to skin cancer; development of drug-delivery techniques, called liposome encapsulations, to allow higher doses of antibiotics and other drugs to be administered by enclosing them in fatty envelopes to reduce systemic side effects; and demonstrating that a molecular test can detect some kinds of leukemia using only a tiny amount of blood, which can be done for about half the cost of the conventional cytogenetic test that requires an invasive bone marrow aspiration.

In the area of education, during the years that Dr. LeMaistre was president the total number of medical, science, and supportive professional trainees increased more than 50 percent. In 1995, almost 2,000 trainees were enrolled in academic programs at MDA, ranging from a few months to four years. Specialties were available for clinical trainees, including all oncology disciplines, some offered only at M.D. Anderson and a few other centers. Newer fellowships were added in cancer screening and detection, cancer-related endocrinology, pain control, and anesthesiology. Continuing medical education courses offered at M. D. Anderson were attended annually by an estimated 15,000 physicians. Diverse public education programs were offered, including the Under Cover Skin Cancer Prevention Project to raise public awareness about excessive sunlight exposure and the bilingual toll-free Cancer Information Service, which provided timely information to almost 400,000 callers from 1976-1996.

During Dr. LeMaistre’s term as president, M. D. Anderson became the first comprehensive cancer center to adopt a Code of Ethics in 1984. The code was revised and updated a decade later. Another milestone was the celebration of M. D. Anderson’s 50th anniversary Golden Jubilee in 1991.

Dr. LeMaistre was widely honored during his career. The Texas Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association saluted him in 1970 for contributions as chairman of the Governor’s Committee on Tuberculosis Control and Eradication in Texas. He received the American Lung Association’s President’s Award in 1987 for his tobacco control efforts. The next year, he was chosen for the first Gibson D. (Gib) Lewis Award for Excellence in Cancer Control.

Other awards include the “People of Vision” Award from the Texas Society to Prevent Blindness in 1991, the Caring Spirit Tribute from Houston’s Institute of Religion in 1993, the American Medical Association’s Distinguished Service Award in 1995, and a Humanitarian Award from The National Conference of Christians and Jews.

In addition to serving as national president of the American Cancer Society, Dr. LeMaistre was president of the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund for four years. He was president of the Council of Southern Universities, president of the Philosophical Society of Texas, and he chaired the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/National Institutes of Health Joint Advisory Committee on Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

In August of 1996, Dr. LeMaistre retired from the presidency of M. D. Anderson and was succeeded by Dr. John Mendelsohn. Like his successor, Dr. Clark, Dr. LeMaistre continued to serve M. D. Anderson as President Emeritus for some time after he retired.