This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 6, 2011 - Like many of their generation, the sole point of his parents' lives here on Earth, said Timothy Eberlein, was to make sure their children were successful.
That would be Timothy J. Eberlein, M.D., founding director of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and chairman of the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine. He also serves as the surgeon-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. His parents' dreams were fulfilled.
"They were pretty remarkable," Eberlein said of his late parents. His father was a foreman in a Pennsylvania glass factory and his mother a church secretary. "They made the necessary sacrifices."
Fast Track
Eberlein was recruited to St. Louis in 1998 to head the Washington University Department of Surgery. Within a month of his arrival, he was asked to serve as interim head of a newly formed cancer conglomerate formed by a collection of area organizations that aspired to have a cancer center that would rival the best in the nation. Thus was born the Siteman Cancer Center.
"It was really Al(vin) and Ruth Siteman who focused and synthesized the importance of the Siteman Cancer Center," said Eberlein, who was soon named permanent director of the center after a nationwide search.
With $35 million in funding from the Sitemans, a strategic plan was quickly developed.
"We got it done in six months," Eberlein said. "We were on the fast track."
Now, with more than $200 million in research grants annually, Siteman Cancer Center, in little more than a decade, has become a world-class cancer facility. Eberlein is cited as one of the primary reasons.
Community Service
"Tim is an extraordinary academic and clinical leader," said Larry J. Shapiro, M.D., dean of the Washington University School of Medicine. "In directing the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center since its inception 12 years ago, he has helped to establish one of the nation's leading cancer centers. He has achieved this while leading one of the best academic departments of surgery in the country."
"Tim has a special ability to multi-task and pay attention to many important matters simultaneously. These are uncommon skills of leadership."
Richard J. Liekweg, president of Barnes-Jewish Hospital, concurs.
"Eberlein is a phenomenal collaborator who thinks three dimensionally," Liekweg said. "He sees the big picture. He is also a visionary, yet at the same time he's practical. He wants to make sure that every resident in St. Louis has easy access to the expertise that exists within the Siteman Cancer Center."
He also wants to make sure that Siteman reaches well beyond the area.
Under Eberlein's leadership, the center has become third only to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the world's oldest cancer center, and the 60-year-old MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, in offering cancer treatment. More than 40,000 cancer patients are treated at Siteman each year and many more are reached through the center's services that extend from Central Missouri to the Bootheel.
"We get into the community and help educate people about cancer risks and how to modify behaviors to reduce those risks," Eberlein said. "We develop screening programs to diagnose cancers earlier and help with different new treatments. Over the course of a year, we probably touch in the neighborhood of 100,000 people through community-based programs."
Siteman's programs, Eberlein says, are also specifically geared to help eliminate disparities in services to patients, addressing patients at higher risk for cancer based on geography, race, access to care, lifestyle or education.
"What we did, was ask what kind of impact we can have as we build programs."
Personalized Medicine
The "we" Eberlein references often, is a vast portfolio of scientists.
"I am very proud of the accomplishments of our investigators and physicians," Eberlein said.
Linda Bauer Cottler takes medical science to regular people as she works to study the causes, spread and control of diseases in the community. Her award-winning HealthStreet program is community-based research that has always focused on substance abuse and HIV prevention research.
His team has made a tremendous investment in understanding cancer: Why does one person develop cancer and not another? What causes a normal cell to become a cancer cell?
"Some of the things we've done, we were probably the first," Eberlein said, "like sequencing the gene involved in leukemia.
"Of course, if you understand the mechanism, you can try to prevent it or you might be able to target changes and treatment -- personalized medicine. We have developed better ways of taking care of patients to have more accurate and earlier diagnoses, and to have more targeted, less toxic treatment."
In 2005, because of Siteman's success based on its broad efforts and unique approach, the center gained the prestigious Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute.
Dream Fulfilled
Timothy Joseph Eberlein, 59, lives in the Central West End of St. Louis, walking distance from the Siteman center -- and a million miles from the life he began in New Kensington, Pa. The small city near Pittsburgh became even smaller when its primary business, the Alcoa aluminum company, shut down when Eberlein was in junior high school. The closing of the steel mills followed.
"It was the beginning of the change for all of the Pittsburgh area," Eberlein recalled.
But the downturn would not thwart his parents' dreams for him and his only brother, now deceased, who became a homicide detective in Washington, D.C.
Eberlein attended the University of Pittsburgh for both his undergraduate and medical degrees and subsequently received an honorary master's degree from Harvard University. Eberlein served his country as a medical professional in the U.S. Public Health Service, the commissioned corps led by the surgeon general, on active duty for three years and inactive reserve for nearly a decade.
He came to St. Louis from Boston, where he spent the bulk of his career, most recently serving as professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, chief of the division of surgical oncology at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and surgical director of the breast evaluation clinic at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Eberlein has held a number of national leadership positions, and currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons and is president-elect of the American Surgical Association.
He is certainly no longer a Bostonian. He and his family are firmly ensconced in St. Louis.
Family Influence
"He and his wife Kim have become extraordinary members of the St. Louis community, supporting many important organizations and cultural assets," Shapiro said.
"Kim" is Kimberly Ann Eberlein, Eberlein's wife of 37 years.
"St. Louis is rich (in culture); and through my wife, I've gotten to see some of the jewels in the crown of St. Louis," Eberlein says. Those "jewels" include the St. Louis Symphony and Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
Kim Eberlein is a former Harvard Medical School administrator who holds a master's degree in public health, and who is currently doing work on race relations. She co-founded The Women's Group on Race Relations in 2009. It's a grassroots organization dedicated to exploring what individuals can do to improve interactions among racial and cultural groups in St. Louis.
"Tim wanted this community to have access to every aspect of cancer care, from education in a community setting to the most recent advances in science," Kim Eberlein said. "I'm involved in the community in a different way than he is and I can give him a woman's perspective."
Eberlein also credits her with influencing his approach to his work.
"Kim helped me to think of patient populations differently," Eberlein said. "Her work has impressed upon me what Siteman could do in terms of broadening its impact on larger patient populations."
This may account, in part, for the fact that Siteman's programs are specifically geared to help eliminate disparities in services to patients.
The Eberleins have a son, Justin, 28, a Washington University Law School graduate who works in the legal department at Emerson. Emerson, coincidently, is Eberlein's co-recipient of the 2011 Science Leadership Award from the Academy of Science-St. Louis.
Dedicated Teacher
Eberlein, who helped develop a breast-cancer vaccine, has had to reduce his time in the lab because of his administrative duties.
"Now what I do is help others find the funding and resources to form collaborations to be successful," Eberlein said.
That's an essential role, says BJC's Liekweg. But there is so much more.
"The role he plays at the center is absolutely critical to setting the vision, the strategy, the culture for the way we treat our patients, the way we advance discovery, and the way we train our future health-care providers," Liekweg said.
Eberlein remains dedicated to teaching. He was recognized with a teaching award while at Harvard Medical School, and he has also directed courses for the American College of Surgeons on grant writing and the conduct of clinical trials.
"I (still) teach medical students and residents all the time," Eberlein says with pride. "One of the most important things we do is educate the next generation of physicians and scientists. They learn from us and most are much, much smarter than we are.
"They challenge the status quo and that helps us develop different ways of thinking about disease and our own biases about how to treat diseases. It's not just the science that Siteman does, but it's the great deal of effort that is going to help the next generation to make cancer a thing of the past."
Gloria Ross is the head of Okara Communications.