Frederick Pei Li
| Frederick Pei Li | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 7, 1940 Canton, China |
| Died | June 12, 2015 (aged 75) |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Li-Fraumeni syndrome |
Frederick Pei Li (May 7, 1940 – June 12, 2015) was a Chinese-American physician. He was born in Canton, China (Guangzhou), and raised in New York City, where his parents operated a Chinese restaurant after war. His father is war hero Li Hanhun.
He received a B.A. in physics from New York University, an M.D. from the University of Rochester, and M.A. in demography from Georgetown University. In 1967 he joined the Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He served for 24 years, mostly at the NCI's field station at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. In 1991, he became head of Dana-Farber's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Control, and retired in 2008.
He was a pioneer researcher of cancer among genetically predisposed families described as Li-Fraumeni syndrome, named after both Dr. Li and his colleague Dr. Joseph Fraumeni. Most recently, Li was Professor of Clinical Cancer Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and the Harry and Elsa Jiler American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor. In 1996, Li was appointed by President Bill Clinton to NCI's National Cancer Advisory Board. He died in 2015 of Alzheimer's disease.
In 1969, Li with Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr. identified 24 families with a high risk of cancer throughout generations of family members. Their research and discovery in the abstract of Li and Dr. Fraumeni's paper described their method and results as, "A search of the Cancer Family Registry of the National Cancer Institute revealed 24 kindreds with the syndrome of sarcoma, breast carcinoma, and other neoplasms in young patients. Cancer developed in an autosomal dominant pattern in 151 blood relatives, 119 (79%) of whom were affected before 45 years of age. These young patients had a total of 50 bone and soft tissue sarcomas of diverse histological subtypes and 28 breast cancers. Additional features of the syndrome included an excess of brain tumors (14 cases), leukemia (9 cases), and adrenocortical carcinoma (4 cases) before age 45 years. These neoplasms also accounted for 73% of the multiple primary cancers occurring in 15 family members. Six of these patients had second cancers linked to radiotherapy. The diversity of tumor types in this syndrome suggests pathogenetic mechanisms which differ from hereditary cancers arising in single organs or tissues. The syndrome is presently diagnosed on clinical grounds; laboratory markers are needed to identify high-risk individuals and families and to provide insights into susceptibility mechanisms that may be shared by a wide variety of cancers."
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