Meir Wetzler, chief of the Leukemia Section at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) and professor of medicine at UB, died Feb. 23 in the Swedish Medical Center in Denver, where he had been a patient in the Neuro Intensive Care Unit following a Feb. 7 skiing accident. He was 60.

A native of Israel, Wetzler earned his medical degree from Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem and completed several fellowships at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

He joined RPCI in 1994 as an assistant professor and physician in the Department of Hematologic Oncology & Bone Marrow Transplantation. He was named chief of the Leukemia Section in 2004.

A UB faculty member since 1999, he was promoted to professor in the Division of Oncology in 2005.

Wetzler’s translational research focused on the role of the BCR gene in chronic and acute leukemias, the involvement of cytokines and their signal transduction in leukemogenesis and the development of immunotherapy for leukemia.

He authored or co-authored more than 100 published medical articles and served as chairman of Roswell’s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee.