In 2003 when Pat Casey was asked join
the Duke team working to open a sister
Medical School in Singapore his initial
reaction was why Singapore?
But after then-chancellor for Health Affairs Ralph
Sneiderman and then Medical School Dean
Sandy Williams articulated why
partnering with the Asian City State
offered a great opportunity for Duke
Casey was all in.
We've seen a lot of  return to come from this
so we have new
discoveries in liver cancer and in
stomach cancer because of the unique
population and the way the disease
presents in Asia we've made unique
discoveries same thing in type 2
diabetes in heart failure in emerging
infectious diseases we focus on dengue
and Zika and flavivirus as well as
influenza.
Casey became the first full
time on-site employee of the Duke NUS graduate medical school and moved
his family to Singapore in 2005 to begin
the arduous process of helping to build
a medical school literally from the
ground up.
There were many reasons why
Sandy Williams Duke NUS'
inaugural Dean was adamant that Casey
was perfect for the job.
"The individual
has to have A-plus scholarly credentials,"
Williams said, "an outstanding record and
teaching, a deep understanding of medical
education at Duke, and a keen appetite
for adventure."
It was a startup and it
was a startup culture and it was quite
exciting from that standpoint.
The obvious challenges we had no facility, we
had no staff, we had no faculty, we had no investigators.
Casey worked with
government agencies in Singapore to
establish research, education, and health
system partnerships.
He was the chief architect of the
school's five signature research programs.
Each of them was selected
because it's a major health burden in
Singapore in Southeast Asia. We felt that
they could connect substantively to
activities at Duke Durham where major
research efforts were underway.
Earlier this year the Duke NUS cancer
research team won a major award for its
global impact on cancer research the Team
Science Award from the American
Association for Cancer Research.
For the
first time in Asia
any team had ever won that prize.
Having
grown up on a farm in South Dakota, Casey
has always been interested in biology.
He arrived at Duke in 1990 as an already
internationally respected cancer
biologist. His discovery of a lipid
modification in which signaling proteins
important in cancer were disrupted by
the attachment of lipid earned him the
prestigious Amgen Award from the
American Society of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology.
We understand the
disease processes much better than we
did 25 years ago. There are clinical
trials of agents targeting this process
that are underway.
Duke appeal to him
because of its ability to bring together
researchers and fundamental cell
regulation and cancer.
The Duke Cancer
Center was a big draw because it was
much going on there and the environment
at Duke was to me a very exciting place.
Casey became the founding director of
Duke's Center for Chemical Biology and
helped found and then directed the
program in molecular cancer biology.
And at Duke and in Singapore he has taught,
mentored, and nurtured countless students and trainees.
I like to see the spark in
their eye when things work. You get
energized when these young folks are
coming up and they're bringing you ideas
and they're troubleshooting with them.
Seeing that spark particularly the ones
that are clearly gonna continue on in
research and you helped them get that start.
Casey's wife Mae Wong is a clinical
scientist in the Cancer and Stem-Cell
Biology Program at Duke NUS. They have
two children.Their son is a Duke grad
now at Northwestern and their daughter
is a high school sophomore in Singapore.
We like to be outdoors we as much as the
weather allows here it's very warm and
humid always, but we've been to Thailand
we've been to Indonesia, Australia and
New Zealand so one nice thing about
Singapore is it's a short flight to many
interesting places in the world so.
Casey's Duke journey has been anything
but short and he says he is grateful for
that.
You want to grow if you want to do
something different if you want to
expand what you're doing you know Duke
is always there with the
opportunities.
And he and Mei Wang look
forward to being there in 15 years for
Duke NUS'
25th anniversary.
And we're just so
happy to be up have been a part of it.
