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Dale Named To Endowed Professorship

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Memphis, Tenn. (December 5, 2006) – James B. Dale, MD, has been named the Gene H. Stollerman, MD, Endowed Professor in Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC).  The Stollerman Professorship was created in 2004 to honor its namesake, a world-renowned physician, scientist and teacher with whom Dr. Dale began his academic career in 1977.

As chief of infectious diseases at UTHSC and associate chief of staff for education at the VA Medical Center in Memphis, Dr. Dale is working on two concurrent National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to study group A streptococcal infections and rheumatic fever.  His research team has developed a vaccine designed to protect against 26 types of streptococcus, which represent more than 85 percent of the infections in North America and Western Europe.  The vaccine, StreptAvax, has been tested in phase 1 and 2 clinical trials and is awaiting translation into a marketed vaccine by GlaxoSmith-Kline.

“Nothing could be more appropriate than to award Jim Dale the Stollerman chair,” commented interim dean of the UTHSC College of Medicine, Pat Wall, MD.  “His contributions to academic medicine have extended the work of Gene Stollerman to unprecedented levels.  Combined, these two scientific investigators have served as role models for generations of medical researchers.”

Widely published and internationally recognized, Dr. Dale is a recipient of the Founder’s Medal from the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation of which he is a past president.  He is the current president of the Tennessee Infectious Diseases Society.  In 2003 he was elected to the prestigious Association of American Physicians, an organization that recognizes excellence in medicine, research and academic leadership.  Dr. Dale is a 1977 graduate of the UTHSC College of Medicine and a 1973 graduate of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Dr. Stollerman joined the UTHSC faculty in 1965 as professor and chair of the Department of Medicine.  He served in that position until leaving UT in 1981 for a position at Boston University as professor of medicine and public health. Prior to coming to Memphis, Dr. Stollerman had been a research chair at Northwestern University for 10 years, where he had begun his now-famous research on a streptococcal vaccine, upon which Dr. Dale is expanding.

As the flagship statewide academic health system, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is focused on a four-tier mission of education, research, clinical care and public service, all in support of a single goal: to improve the health of Tennesseans.  Offering a broad range of postgraduate training opportunities, the main campus, which includes six colleges, is located in Memphis.  UTHSC has additional College of Medicine campus locations in Knoxville and Chattanooga.  For more information, visit www.uthsc.edu.

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