Medical School Professor Heads Cancer Program

The Harvard Medical School will play a leading role in cancer research to be conducted in New England Deaconess Hospital's proposed Shields Warren Radiation Research Building.

Dr. Henry I. Kohn, recently named Alva T. and Viola D. Fuller-American Cancer Society Professor of Radiology at the Medical School, has been chosen to head the program. He said yesterday that his staff will probably include some members of the Medical School faculty.

Construction on the research building, a $2.3 million six-level structure, will begin next month. It will be located between Brookline Ave. and Binney St. and will house high-energy radiation equipment for cancer treatment. Deaconess Hospital, Children's Hospital, and Beth Israel Hospital will share its facilities.

Although no definite research programs have yet been outlined, Dr. Kohn said that he and his staff will study the effects of radiation on body tissue, with the hope that somehow cancerous tissue can be made more sensitive to radiation, or healthy tissue more resistant.

Dr. Kohn said that Medical School students will be among those conducting research in the building when it is completed, probably in early 1965.