This document contains material concerning William J. Catalona, M.D. that has been
extracted from previous press releases.
William J Catalona, M.D. is a researcher and prostate cancer surgeon. Dr. Catalona is
known for having been the first to show that a simple blood test that measures levels of
prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the most accurate method for detecting prostate cancer
and for having helped develop the "free" PSA test as a means of improving the accuracy of
prostate cancer screening. Dr. Catalona established and directed the largest
single-institution prostate cancer-screening program in the United States, including 36,000
men in the St. Louis area. He also led national studies that gained approval of the PSA and
free PSA blood tests by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Catalona is currently conducting research in the genetics of prostate cancer. His
multi-institutional research group has collected DNA samples and clinical data on hundreds
of brothers with prostate cancer. Studies of these patients have revealed several new
regions in the human genome that might contain prostate cancer susceptibility genes and
genes that control prostate cancer aggressiveness. Identification of prostate cancer genes
could lead to new tests for prostate cancer as well as possible new means for treating or
preventing prostate cancer.
Dr. Catalona specializes in prostate cancer surgery and is recognized
as an expert in performing the "nerve-sparing" radical prostatectomy
that can preserve sexual potency. He has performed more than 5,000
of these operations, more
than anyone else in the world. His
patients have come from all 50 states in the United States, as well
as from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America,
and include baseball greats Joe Torre, Stan
Musial, and Bob Watson.
Dr. Catalona has received awards and honors, including the James Ewing Society Award for
Cancer Research, the American Urological Association's Gold Cystoscope Award, Hugh Hampton
Young Award, and Eugene Fuller Medal, and the American Association of Genitourinary
Surgeons' James Stockwell Barringer Medal and Edward L. Keyes medal. He was elected to the
Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and the St. Louis Academy of Science. He has served on
advisory boards of the National Kidney Foundation and American Cancer Society and the
editorial boards of several medical journals. He has been principal investigator on grants
or awards from the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, American Cancer
Society, and CaP CURE. He is medical director of the Urological Research Foundation, editor
of its newsletter, Quest, and has developed a popular prostate cancer information
website, drcatalona.com. He is author of more than 320 articles in scientific
journals, books, and book chapters in medical texts. He has also made several award-winning
videotapes of cancer operations.
Dr. Catalona has appeared frequently on television and in the print media as a
spokesperson on prostate cancer issues and developments. His research has been profiled in
the lay press, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time,
Business Week, and on national television news programs, including NBC, CBS, ABC, and
CNN, as well as in the medical literature, including Nature, Journal of the American
Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of
Human Genetics.
A graduate of Yale Medical School, Dr. Catalona trained in surgery at the Yale New-Haven
Hospital, the University of California San Francisco, and the National Cancer Institute and
trained in urology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a member of the faculty of the
Washington University School of Medicine, serving as chief of its urology division for 14
years. Dr. Catalona is currently a professor in the Department of Urology at Northwestern
Feinberg School of Medicine and is Director of the Clinical Prostate Cancer Program of
Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Click here to view Curriculum Vitae.