FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011

Dr. Benedict Benigno, Honorary Chair

Dr. Benigno received his M.D. degree from the Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed his residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. He completed two fellowships in gynecologic oncology, one at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and the other at the M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston. He was a visiting professor at the University of Saigon for three years during the War in Vietnam where he set up a residency training program for young Vietnamese surgeons.

From 1974 to 1982, he was on the faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine where he was the Director of Gynecologic Oncology at Emory Hospital and at Grady Memorial Hospital. Following his departure from Emory, he founded University Gynecologic Oncology (UGO). UGO is one of the world leaders in oncology care for women with cancer of the female reproductive tract. He also serves as the Director of Gynecologic Oncology at Northside Hospital.

Dr. Benigno has published numerous articles and textbook chapters and speaks regularly on various aspects of gynecologic cancer. In 2008, he brought the technique of heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) to Northside Hospital where it has become routine in the treatment of patients with ovarian cancer.

Because the five year survival rate in patients with advanced cancer of the ovary has not improved significantly in the last 25 years, Dr. Benigno founded the Ovarian Cancer Institute (OCI) in 1999 and continues to serve as its Chief Executive Officer. The laboratories are located at the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Tissue and serum are collected in the operating room and flash frozen prior to being transported to Georgia Tech. Numerous basic science publications have emerged from this work, which is committed not only to the discovery of a screening test for ovarian cancer, but also to finding more efficacious and less toxic ways of treating this dreadful disease. OCI has the largest tissue and serum bank for this disease in the world and it has created the most advanced computerized database for ovarian cancer that exists today.

Dr. Benigno is a member of the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, the Felix Rutledge Society, and is a clinical professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Emory University School of Medicine. He serves on the St. Joseph's Translational Research Institute Board and the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience Board at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was honored in 2002 with the Hero of Medicine Award for the Most Innovative Cancer Research in the State of Georgia. In addition to his medical and scientific interests, Dr. Benigno supports the Atlanta Symphony and Atlanta Opera. He is fluent in French and has been a lifelong student of the piano. His wife, Sheila, is a prominent portrait artist, and they have three children, Justin, Alexander and Serena.