Bert W. O’Malley, MD, FAACR, chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine who was known for his research in molecular endocrinology, died November 11, 2025. He was 88 years old.
A member of the AACR since 1989, O’Malley was elected a Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2020 in recognition of his work that showed how intracellular hormones and cofactors function at the DNA level to regulate protein production, affect cellular function, and modulate cancer cell metastasis.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1936, O’Malley received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1959 and a medical degree from its School of Medicine in 1963.
O’Malley completed internship and residency training at Duke University Medical Center in 1965, followed by four years at the National Institutes of Health, where he was head of the molecular biology section of the National Cancer Institute’s Endocrine Branch. He then became professor and director of the Reproductive Biology Center at Vanderbilt University.
In 1973, he joined Baylor College of Medicine as chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, a position he held for 45 years. He stepped down as chairman in 2018 and assumed the position of chancellor of the college.
He was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He held more than 30 patents and was a member of the National Academy of Inventors. He was president of the Endocrine Society in 1984-1985 and received its Fred Conrad Koch Lifetime Achievement Award in 1988.
He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2007 and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University in 2018. Among his other awards and recognitions were the Dickson Prize in 1979, the Rodbell Award from the NIH in 2001, the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Biology in 2001, the Brinker Award in Breast Cancer Research in 2001, the Pasarow Award in Cancer Research in 2006, the Carl Hartman Award for Reproductive Research in 2007, the Steven Beering Award in Medical Research in 2009, the Ernst Schering Prize in 2011, the Ipsen Foundation Research Prize in Endocrinology in 2013, the Endocrine Society’s Outstanding Innovation in Science Award in 2015, and the University of Cincinnati’s Jensen Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Selected Awards and Honors
2018 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Columbia University, New York, New York
2015 Outstanding Innovation in Science Award, Endocrine Society, Washington, DC
2014 Dale Medal, Society for Endocrinology, Bristol, United Kingdom
2013 Endocrine Regulation Prize, Fondation IPSEN, Paris, France
2011 Ernst Schering Prize, Berlin, Germany
2008 National Medal of Science, National Science Foundation, Washington, DC
2007 Elected Member, Association of American Physicians, Belleville, Michigan
2003 George W. Beadle Award, Genetics Society of America, Rockville, Maryland
2003 Elected Fellow, Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
2001 Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize in Medicine, Accademia Nazionale Dei Lincei, Rome, Italy
1997 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Microbiology, American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC
1996 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1995 Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC
1993 Elected Member, National Academy of Medicine, Washington, DC
1992 Elected, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC