Cagle, Anderson named 2024 Distinguished Alumni
McGovern Medical School has named Leslie Cagle, MD ’83; and Larry Anderson, MD, PhD ’00, as its 2024 Distinguished Alumnus Award recipients.
The Distinguished Alumnus Award honors alumni of McGovern Medical School who have made significant contributions in the areas of medical science and education or the prevention and treatment of disease, as well as those who demonstrate a continued interest in the Medical School and its students. The Distinguished Alumnus Award has been presented by the Alumni Association since 1987.
Leslie Cagle, MD, ’83
Cagle is a retired general surgeon who worked for nearly 30 years in private practice in Vancouver, Wash. She began her career as a general surgeon in 1990 at The Vancouver Clinic, SWWMC. From 1996-97, she served as a visiting senior registrar at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, Scotland, before returning to The Vancouver Clinic in 1997. Cagle retired in 2019 after stints at Pacific Surgical Specialists and Peace Health Medical Center in Vancouver, Wash.
“I am flattered to be named as a distinguished alumna,” Cagle said. “For a retired community-based doctor, this is considered a lifetime achievement.”
After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, Cagle completed a master of science in physiology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 1979 before earning her MD at McGovern Medical School in 1983, where she was honored with the Mosby Scholarship Award. She completed her PGY 1 and PGY 2 residency years in general surgery in 1985 at the Medical School before serving a two-year NIH Surgical Oncology Fellowship at UCLA, where she was part of the team that pioneered the technique of sentinel lymph node biopsy. She then returned to UTHealth Houston to complete her surgical residency, finishing in 1990.
“I am at an advantage, because I did both medical school and surgical training at McGovern Medical School,” Cagle said. “Both laid the groundwork for the success of my career. I did not spend my career in an academic setting, but practiced in a medium-sized, community hospital. Thank goodness for tertiary care hospitals for the sickest of the sick, but the majority of patient care and surgical care is done in communities. I am thrilled to represent that part of the healthcare spectrum.”
Throughout her career, Cagle held memberships in many distinguished societies, including the American College of Surgeons; the Physicians for Social Responsibility, where she served on the Board of Directors, the Association for Women Surgeons, the Portland Surgical Society, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons, and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Additionally, she held positions as the chair of the Surgery Department at The Vancouver Clinic, Hospital General Surgery Division Chair, and in the Hospital Peer Review committee.
When reflecting on her time at the Medical School, Cagle remembered a lesson from Dr. Cheves Smythe in her third year on how for most patients, the care plan becomes routine, and that you really must take the time to learn about patients’ lives and their stories.
“One trick I taught younger surgeons is to find a specific place in the chart where you write one sentence about the patient unrelated to the disease at hand,” Cagle said. “For example, I would write ‘today we talked about her upcoming trip to the Grand Canyon,’ and on a follow-up appointment, ask about her trip. You will be surprised at what you can learn, and the patient will be delighted you took the time to ask about something personal.”
Larry Anderson, MD, PhD ’00
Anderson is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Section of Hematologic Malignancies & Cellular Therapy at the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in 2008, where he specializes in treatment of plasma cell disorders and was named Director of the Myeloma, Waldenstrom’s, and Amyloidosis Program in 2017.
“This is a huge honor for me,” Anderson said. “It is very rewarding to be recognized by my alma mater that gave me the wings I needed to soar in my career.”
Anderson graduated from the MD/PhD program at McGovern Medical School in 2000, after earning his Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Sciences from Texas A&M University in 1993. He completed his PhD in immunology under the advisory of Craig A. Mullen, MD, PhD at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He completed his internal medicine residency in 2003 at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, in Rochester, MN, and a medical oncology fellowship in 2006 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.
Anderson said that he ranks the Distinguished Alumnus Award among the top accomplishments of his career, along with his co-first author publication in The New England Journal of Medicine and developing a world-class multiple myeloma treatment center and clinical research program at UT Southwestern Medical Cetner.
“This school took a chance on me by allowing me into the MD/PhD program during my second year, and I am very happy to know that I have made my school proud,” Anderson said. “I knew when I started in 1993 that I wanted to focus on T cell immunotherapy of cancer, and now I am thrilled to have helped bring CAR T-cell therapies to clinical practice for multiple myeloma patients through my work on clinical trials.”
Anderson has garnered a bevy of honors throughout his career, beginning in 1997, when he earned the Rosalie B. Hite Predoctoral Fellowship in Cancer Research from MD Anderson. Since then, he has earned the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Fellow Award, the American Society of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award, the K12 Career Development Award in Medical Oncology, the Texas Super Doctor Rising Star, and the North Texas “Man of the Year” award from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Additionally, he was named to the Dallas Business Journal’s Who’s Who in Health Care, D CEO Magazine’s Top Healthcare Leaders and has been named a Texas Super Doctor by Texas Monthly Magazine each year since 2018 and a Best Doctor by D Magazine every year since 2021. He was elected to Fellowship in the American College of Physicians (FACP) in 2021 and was named director of the Hematologic Malignancies & Cellular Therapy Clinical Research Program in 2022. He also serves as Co-Director of the Phase 1 Clinical Trial Program at Simmons Cancer Center since 2022 and won the “Most Engaged Principal Investigator” award in 2024. His leadership and high enrollment on clinical trials have helped lead to several new standard of care therapies for myeloma, from quadruplet frontline induction therapy to CAR T-cell therapy at relapse, and he is “even more excited about the future of myeloma treatment based on preliminary results of ongoing clinical trials with various T-cell therapies, including current attempts to move CAR T-cell therapy forward to frontline therapy in newly diagnosed myeloma.”
Anderson thanked his wife, Jenny, who has stuck by him for the past 30 years, after marrying in medical school, and has “put up with all of my training years and early career not knowing how things would end up.”
The Distinguished Alumni Awards will be presented Friday, March 21 at the annual Alumni Awards Ceremony during Alumni Weekend.