New chief at Moffitt is old hand

TAMPA -- Less than a year ago, Dr. William S. Dalton left a high-ranking post at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center for a college deanship in his home state of Arizona.

It was a great job in a familiar place and a chance to influence future doctors. But he yearned for the feeling he used to get watching his Moffitt colleagues searching for a cure for cancer.

"I missed the mission, the idea of the mission," said Dalton, an internationally known cancer researcher. "One thing that has always impressed me about the (Moffitt) faculty and staff was there is no ambiguity about what they're there for. It's almost spine-tingling."

So when Dalton, a father of three, was approached about the top job at Moffitt, he easily accepted.

"Frankly, the Moffitt experience is once in a lifetime," Dalton said in a phone interview from Arizona on Tuesday, hours after his new appointment as Moffitt's new director and chief executive officer was announced. "I just can't pass that up."

Dalton, 52, replaces Dr. John Ruckdeschel, who for 10 years helped turn Moffitt into a leading cancer treatment and research facility. It is the only center of its kind in the state and continues to win national accolades. Its researchers frequently publish and present important papers.

Ruckdeschel was a whiz at raising money, partly because he has a gift for breaking complicated information into understandable nuggets, even for lawmakers.

Dalton said he wants to continue on the fast track paved by his predecessor.

"The institution has done very well," he said, "but its goal is to prevent and cure cancer, so we have a long way to go."

Dalton spent five years at Moffitt, serving as both deputy director and associate center director for clinical investigations.

According to Moffitt officials, in 1999 Dalton and fellow Moffitt researcher Dr. Richard Jove made a groundbreaking discovery in the arena of multiple myeloma, a rare and devastating bone cancer. They identified critical elements that cause cells to grow out of control and become cancerous.

Dalton's other contributions to the field have also been significant.

According to Moffitt, his research was among the first to prove that drugs called chemosensitizers could reverse multidrug resistance. While at Moffitt, he also worked with researchers, medical doctors and pharmacists to speed up the process by which laboratory discoveries were launched into patient care.

Dalton will start Aug. 1.

-- Times staff writer Wes Allison contributed to this report.

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