Distinguished UWI alumnus, Dr. Franklyn Prendergast received his medical degree with honors from The UWI in 1968 and after an internship attended Lincoln College, University of Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar where he obtained a BA with First Class Honors in 1971 and MA in 1979.
He commenced a residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in 1971 and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the joint Mayo Graduate School / University of Minnesota program in 1977.
Dr. Prendergast was appointed to the Faculty of the Department of Pharmacology at the Mayo Graduate School immediately after receiving his Ph.D. and rose through the ranks quickly to become a full Professor simultaneously in that Department and in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 1986. That same year, he was named the Edmond and Marion Guggenheim Professor and also Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. . Prior to his retirement on December 31, 2014, Dr. Prendergast was the Emeritus Edmond and Marion Guggenheim Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Emeritus Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Mayo Medical School and the director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine.
Dr. Prendergast was appointed as the Director for Research of Mayo Clinic, Rochester in 1989, serving for the subsequent four years in that capacity. In 1990, he was also appointed to Mayo's highest administrative committees, the Board of Governors and the Mayo Foundation's Board of Trustees. He served on these bodies continuously until 2009. In 1995, he was appointed as Director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, a position he held until September 2006. His last administrative role at Mayo was as the charter Director of the Mayo Center for Individualized Medicine. He retired from that position and also from the Mayo Foundation in December 2014.
Throughout his academic career, Dr. Prendergast participated extensively in numerous NIH and NSF grant review groups, task forces and advisory committees. Additionally, he was appointed as a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly and Co., a post he held from 1995 until 2017. He has been awarded several honors, including honorary doctorates from Purdue University and the University of the West Indies, Distinguished Alumni awards from the University of the West Indies, University of Minnesota and, most recently, in 2019 the Mayo Clinic.
Dr. Prendergast has served for the National Institute of Health on numerous study section review groups; as a charter member of the Board of Advisors for the Division of Research Grants, now the Center for Scientific Review; the National Advisory General Medical Sciences Council; and the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute. He held a Presidential Commission for service on the National Cancer Advisory Board. Dr. Prendergast also has served in numerous other advisory roles for the National Institute of Health and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and he is a member of the board of directors of the Translational Genomics Research Institute and the Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI). Dr. Prendergast has served on the board of directors of Eli Lilly & Co. since 1995 until his retirement in 2017. He also served as a director of Cancer Genetics from 2014 to 2018. He also currently serves on the board of directors for Novosteo, Inc. and Neubase Therapeutics, both private biotechnology drug development companies.
