Chairman Emeritus George D. Behrakis To Lead Panel On Health And Wellness
George D. Behrakis
Leadership 100 Chairman Emeritus George D. Behrakis will lead a discussion with two renowned medical specialists on the subject of “Health and Wellness: Improving our Quality of Life” at the Health Forum on Thursday, February 21, 2019.The participants will include George Dangas, MD PhD, Professor of Medicine, Cardiology and Professor of Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and a leading authority in Interventional Cardiology and Harry T. Anastopoulos, MD, Gastroenterologist, Clinical Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, who is affiliated with its teaching hospital at Beth Israel, Deaconess Medical Center.
Behrakis, a prominent businessman and pioneer in the pharmaceutical industry and medical research, has devoted his life to philanthropy since his retirement in 1998. While he has supported many organizations and institutions over the decades, including the establishment of the George D. and Margo Behrakis Art of the Ancient World Wing at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, he has focused on the area of health and medicine, supporting the building of Northeastern University Health and Sciences Center at its College of Health Sciences, one of the most modern such facilities in the nation. His philanthropy has also included the George D. Behrakis Chair in the Field of Targeted Pharmaceuticals at Northeastern University; the George D. Behrakis Hellenic Fellowship in Respiratory Allergy at the Johns Hopkins Asthma & Allergy Center, and various programs at Tufts University, Medford; Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Saints Memorial Medical Center in Lowell.
He is a graduate of Lowell High School and Northeastern University, where he earned a degree in pharmaceuticals in 1957. His history in pharmaceuticals is legendary. Beginning his career in sales at Johnson & Johnson, he and his team created Tylenol. He went on to start his own company, Dooner Laboratories. After selling it nine years later, he opened Muro Pharmaceuticals, which first worked on eye products and later moved on to asthma products. With Behrakis as the head, Muro was highly successful and included the research and marketing of Volmax for asthma. He sold the company in 1996. He remained on the board for two additional years, retiring in 1998.
In recent years, Behrakis also provided funding and personal involvement along with Harvard University towards a national anti-smoking campaign in Greece, alongside the Hellenic Cancer Society and Panagiotis Behrakis, MD, a well-respected pulmonary physician there and Behrakis’ first cousin. “Smoke Free Greece” is credited with reducing smoking among Greece’s youth by 32 per cent by 2018. He had established the George D. Behrakis Research Lab in 2009, donated by the Behrakis Foundation to the Hellenic Cancer Society. It is a state-of-the-art laboratory for lung function testing. Equipped with high-end technology and operated by a team of experts in Respiratory Medicine, the Lab provides high quality and standardized services that follow the scientific and technological advances in the field of lung function as well as to contribute and support tobacco prevention through scientific and educational means, working with the Hellenic Cancer Society and the Institute of Public Health of The American College of Greece, sharing efforts under the “Smoke Free Greece” campaign.
