Robert Peter Gale
Robert Peter Gale is an American physician and medical researcher. He is known for research in leukemia and other bone marrow disorders.
Education
Gale received his A.B. degree with honors in biology and chemistry from Hobart College in 1966 and his M.D. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970. His postgraduate medical training was at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1970 to 1973. In 1976 he received a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology from the University of California at Los Angeles following doctoral work focusing on cancer immunology. His postdoctoral studies at UCLA were funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Leukemia Society of America, where he was the Bogart Fellow and Scholar.Career
From 1973 to 1993, Gale was on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology & Oncology, where he focused on the molecular biology, immunology and treatment of leukemia. He also developed the bone marrow transplant program supported by the NIH. At UCLA, he was active in the Department of Psychology, where he and his colleagues studied interactions among stress, immunity and cancer.From 1980 to 1997, Gale was Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, an organization of more than 400 transplant centers in over 60 countries worldwide working together to analyze and advance knowledge about blood cell and bone marrow transplants. From 1989 to 2003 Gale chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Studies in Leukemia, a charity funding innovation leukemia research.
From 1986 to 1993, Gale was President of the Armand Hammer Center for Advanced Studies in Nuclear Energy and Health, a foundation supporting research on medical aspects of nuclear issues. From 1985 to 1990 he was the Wald Scholar in Biomedical Communications at UCLA. During this time he volunteered his expertise in bone marrow transplants to the USSR, for the victims of radiation poisoning incurred during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He aided Dr. Alexander Buranov and Dr. Angelina Guskova at Moscow's Hospital #6, a state hospital specializing in treating radiation sickness.
From 1993 to 1999, Gale was Senior Physician and Corporate Director of Bone Marrow and Blood Cell Transplantation at Salick Health Care, Inc. in Los Angeles, a subsidiary of AstraZeneca. Gale was also responsible for developing cancer treatment guidelines and for studying medical aspects of managed cancer care.
From 2000 to 2004 he was Senior Vice President for Medical Affairs at Antigenics Inc., in New York where he was responsible for design, implementation and analysis of clinical trials of cancer vaccines. He was also Senior Medical Consultant to Oxford Health Plans in areas of advanced medical technologies. From 2004 to 2007, Gale was Senior Vice President of Research for ZIOPHARM Oncology in Boston, Massachusetts and New York, New York, which he helped co-found. His focus was on developing and testing new cancer therapies. His activities included development and execution of clinical trials in blood and bone marrow cancers, transplantation and immune disorders. Since 2005 Gale has been a Visiting Professor of Haematology in the Centre for Haematology, Department of Immunology and Inflammation, Imperial College, London assigned to Hammersmith Hospital. He is an editor, co-editor and reviewer of many scientific journals in hematology, oncology, immunology, transplantation and internal medicine.
Gale is regarded as a world expert on the medical response to nuclear and radiation accidents and has participated in rescue efforts at Chernobyl, Goiânia, Tokaimura, Fukushima and others. In 2012, after extensive analysis of the Japanese data, he said that "the increased risk of cancer incidence would be only 0.002 percent for a member of the Japanese public".