The American Society for Radiation Oncology has named this year's recipients of the Gold Medal, the Society's highest honor, which recognizes contributions to the field in research, clinical care, teaching, and service. The awardees, who will be recognized at the Annual Meeting in October, are:
* J. Robert Cassady, MD, FASTRO, who recently retired as Chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts, and was also Professor of Radiation Oncology at Tufts University Medical Center.
* George T.Y. Chen, PhD, FASTRO, a medical physicist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who has made early innovations in retrospective image fusion, as well as contributions to 4-D CT imaging for target delineation of moving tumors, heavy ion radiotherapy treatment planning, and proton and photon radiotherapy.
* Mark W. Dewhirst, DVM, PhD, FASTRO, who has made essential contributions in the areas of hypoxia, angiogenesis, and the development of heat-activated drug delivery using liposomes. He is currently the Gustavo S. Montana Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology, with joint appointments in pathology and biomedical engineering, and the Associate Dean for Faculty Mentoring in the School of Medicine at Duke University.
Randal Olshefski, MD, has been appointed Chief of the Section of Hematology/Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplantation at Nationwide Children's Hospital, where he has been Interim Chief since last year. He is also Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Ohio State University College of Medicine.
Gerald P. Bodey, MD, Professor Emeritus of Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, has received the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumnus Award, which honors alumni for professional and personal accomplishments or humanitarian service.
Thomas J. Smith, MD, and Bruce E. Hillner, MD, have been named winners of the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation Professionalism Article Prize in the Professionalism in Practice category for their New England Journal of Medicine article "Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care" (2011; 364:2060-2065).
Claudine Jreissaty, RN, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, has received the 2012 Ethel Fleming Arceneaux Outstanding Nurse-Oncologist Award, which includes a $15,000 award and is the center's highest nursing honor. She has been at MD Anderson since 2008, and has held her role as a clinical nurse in the Sugar Land Regional Care Center's Medical Oncology and Hematology Clinic since 2010, specifically working in the surgical breast oncology clinic since this past January.
Pediatric oncology and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation pioneer Jean Sanders, MD, has retired from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she was a Member of the Clinical Research Division and the Gerald and Gloria Swanson Endowed Chair in Pediatrics at the University of Washington Medicine. She had previously served as Director of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program, and last year received the Clinical Research Division Lifetime Achievement Award.
"Jean built our pediatric transplant program," said Fred Appelbaum, MD, Director of the Clinical Research Division and Head of the Division of Medical Oncology, and Executive Director of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. "She is the person who-probably more than any other single individual in this country-built the nation's pediatric transplant program."