Keith L. Black, M.D., chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, will deliver Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s eighth annual Levi Watkins, Jr. Lecture at noon on Thursday, Oct. 15.

Keith L. Black, M.D., chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

The title of Black’s talk, to be presented in 208 Light Hall on the VUSM campus, is: “Brain Tumors: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”
 

Black is a pioneer in research to design chemotherapeutic agents to cross the blood-brain barrier. He has worked to develop vaccines against brain cancers, brain mapping techniques and the use of microwave energy to destroy tumors. He is the author of a book entitled "Brain Surgeon - A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles."

Black received the Jacob Javits award from the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council of the National Institutes of Health in 2000 for his work in brain chemotherapeutics. Black and patients undergoing the first clinical trials of the drug, RMP-7, were profiled in 1996 on the PBS program, "The New Explorers," in an episode called "Outsmarting the Brain." He was also featured on the cover of Time magazine in the fall 1997 special edition of "Heroes in Medicine."

The lecture honors Levi Watkins Jr., M.D., famed cardiac surgeon and the first African-American student to be admitted to and graduate from VUSM. Watkins received his medical degree from Vanderbilt in 1970 and further trained at Johns Hopkins and Harvard. In 2002, the annual lectureship, which focuses on closing the racial disparities gap in health care, was named after Watkins, and he delivered the first lecture.