O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Spring 2020 | Page 13

After proving himself to Sherma and his other
professors, Sleckman was eventually admitted as a fulltime
student at Lafayette.
While there, Sleckman sought other opportunities to get
involved in research, initially because he thought doing
so would give him an edge in medical school, but he
soon discovered himself unwilling to part with it.
“I started doing research and just loved it, so I decided
that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.
Sleckman then decided not to return to Summit,
New Jersey, to take over the practice promised to him
by that local surgeon, but he did start applying to M.D.
and Ph.D. programs.
By the time Sleckman was invited to interview with
Harvard Medical School, he was a star student at
Lafayette and had even gotten used to explaining his
background to interviewers who often asked about the
educational gap in his resumé.
The interviewer from Harvard was intrigued by Sleckman’s
start as a state trooper in New Jersey. To his surprise,
Sleckman was one of only two applicants who were
accepted by the interviewer that year into the Harvard-
MIT Health Sciences and Technology M.D. program.
The other applicant had previously worked as a
New York City cab driver for six years and would later
become one of Sleckman’s closest friends.
“We just think he liked people with unusual life paths,”
Sleckman said. “I had a very unusual life path.”
Fifteen years later, Barry Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D., was
both a clinical immunologist and an infectious disease
scientist when he took his first faculty position in the
Department of Pathology & Immunology at Washington
University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Sleckman chose Washington University for its
immunology program, but he eventually decided to
dedicate more of his time to scientific research and
to developing new ways to effectively use research to
improve care for patients.
“When I started in science, I didn’t think what I was
doing was applicable or related to the clinic,” Sleckman
said. “Now, I see how vital and integrated basic science
research is to clinical care.”
Now that he was no longer regularly seeing patients,
Sleckman was able to focus on studying the pathways
involved in DNA repair, an important area in cancer
research, and teaching medical students at the
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
“WHEN I STARTED IN
SCIENCE, I DIDN’T THINK
WHAT I WAS DOING WAS
APPLICABLE OR RELATED
TO THE CLINIC. NOW,
I SEE HOW VITAL AND
INTEGRATED BASIC
SCIENCE RESEARCH IS
TO CLINICAL CARE.”
— Barry P. Sleckman, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, O’Neal Comprehensive
Cancer Center at UAB
Sleckman soon joined the DNA repair research program
at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington
University and was later asked to serve as the associate
director of the Siteman Cancer Center.
Although he initially had little interest in the position,
Sleckman discovered that he actually enjoyed
coordinating and working with the various programs in
the Siteman Cancer Center, which led him to take on an
array of other positions there.
In his role as associate director of basic science,
Sleckman earned a reputation for recruiting existing
faculty from across the university and persuading them
to apply their expertise to cancer.
One summer, over the course of about 10 weeks,
Sleckman met with roughly 30 faculty members from
traditionally nonclinical fields such as computer science,
engineering and chemistry. On Monday, Wednesday
and Friday of every week, Sleckman would take one
faculty member from the main campus to lunch to
discuss his or her areas of study and whether any of
those areas could be relevant to cancer.
Confused why a basic scientist in the Siteman Cancer
Center would be interested in his research, one faculty
member told a friend from the Washington University
computer science department, who had already met
with Sleckman himself, that he didn’t do cancer research.
“Yes, but by the end of the lunch, you will,” his friend
reportedly told him.
UAB.EDU/CANCER
11