Diana Dickson-Witmer, MD, has been appointed Medical Director of the Christiana Care Breast Center at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center, promoted from Associate Medical Director and replacing Emily Penman, MD, who will be taking on additional responsibilities in the Department of Surgery.
Norman E. Sharpless, MD, has been appointed Deputy Director of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. He was most recently Associate Director for Translational Research, and will continue in his current role as the Wellcome Distinguished Professor in Cancer Research and Professor of Medicine and Genetics.
Mark Hurwitz, MD, has been appointed Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital and to the new positions of Vice Chair for Quality, Safety, and Performance Excellence and Director of Thermal Oncology.
Lawrence R. Menendez, MD, and Daniel C. Allison, MD, MBA, have joined Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedic Center, and will partner with Earl Warren Brien, MD, to form the orthopedic oncology practice there.
Internist Judy C. Y. Lin, MD, has joined ColumbiaDoctors of the Hudson Valley to focus on treating women and the elderly. Her practice concentrates on women's health, multi-systemic illnesses, preventive health care, emotional health, and connecting patients with community resources. She most recently served as a primary care physician at Hudson Valley Medical Associates in Pomona, and was the first full-time Medical Director for United Hospice of Rockland.
A $10-million commitment from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Board Member David M. Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Carlyle Group, a global alternative asset manager, will fund the new David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Research. The program will include postgraduate fellowships for future leaders in the field and competitive grants to underwrite translational research.
Mount Sinai Medical Center has opened the Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine, which will house both clinical and research facilities for the Tisch Cancer Institute, as well as Mount Sinai's institutes for the brain, heart, children's health, genomics, and imaging. Steven Burakoff, MD, is Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute; and the Center's other institutes are Zahi A. Fayad, PhD; Valentin Fuster, MD; Bruce D. Gelb, MD; Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD; and Eric Schadt, PhD.
Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals has established the Jefferson Jane and Leonard Korman Lung Center, which will focus on coordinated treatment for patients with lung cancer and lung disease, as well as basic and translational research. Mani Kavuru, MD, has been named Director, and is also Director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care.
Fabrizio Michelassi, MD, the Lewis Atterbury Stimson Professor and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and Surgeon-in-Chief of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, has received the Grand Award of Merit from the American Society of the Italian Legions of Merit, the Society's highest honor, in recognition of Michelassi's accomplishments, dedication, and leadership in medicine and surgery.
The Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Research Fund has awarded five grants to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and the Siteman Cancer Center. The grants, totaling $2 million, will fund innovative early-stage science research.
* Kenneth Murphy, MD, PhD, for his research with William Gillanders, MD, that uses a rare immune cell to fight infection and potentially cancers;
* Barry Sleckman, MD, PhD, for his work to develop a screening process to identify compounds that make malignant tumors more vulnerable to radiation and chemotherapy without harming normal tissues;
* David Curiel, MD, PhD, for his lab research in the Division of Cancer Biology and in the Biologic Therapeutics Center;
* Mark Watson, MD, PhD, for his research in the Tissue Procurement and Multiplexed Gene Analysis Laboratories; and
* Kyunghee Choi, PhD, for her lab research that uses stem cells to model severe congenital neutropenia and leukemia.
Also at Siteman, David DeNardo, PhD, a research associate member of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, has been awarded a $75,000 Young Investigator Award by the Cancer Research Foundation for his research on how cancer cells interact with the immune system.
Two young members of the oncology community were named in Forbes "30 Under 30" annual listing in the Science and Healthcare category:
* Joshua Sommer, Executive Director of the Chordoma Foundation, who was diagnosed with the rare bone cancer at 18, was recognized for establishing the foundation in order to increase research dedicated to developing treatments for chordomas-specifically to advance research in tumor tissue, cell lines, and animal models of the disease. The foundation has to date raised approximately $2.5 million and funds research in 11 labs.
* Isaac Kinde, an MD-PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, was recognized for his work developing simpler, non-invasive techniques to detect cancers in the colon, pancreas, and ovaries.
The American Association for Cancer Research is launching a new peer-reviewed journal, Cancer Immunology Research, online in April at the Annual Meeting, followed by a monthly print issue beginning in June. The journal will include research articles on advances in cancer immunology, including basic investigations in host-tumor interactions, developmental therapeutics in model systems, early translational studies in patients, and clinical trials.
Founding Editor-in-Chief Glenn Dranoff, MD, Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School and Leader of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Program in Cancer Immunology, said in a statement, "My vision is that by disseminating new knowledge of cancer immunology, this journal will catalyze cross-disciplinary work that yields a deeper understanding of the host-tumor relationship, more potent cancer treatments and improved clinical outcomes."
New ASCO Officers
Peter P. Yu, MD, has been elected President-Elect of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, to be President for the 2014-2015 term. He will become President-Elect in June at this year's Annual Meeting.
Director of Cancer Research at Palo Alto Medical Foundation, he joined ASCO in 1986 and has served on the Quality of Care, Cancer Research, and Clinical Practice Committees; the Health Information Technology Workgroup (as its current Chair); the Integrated Media and Technology Committee; and the Board of Directors; and as also previously the ASCO State Affiliate Society President of the Association of Northern California Oncologists. He is a member of Cancer and Leukemia Group B and the Gynecologic Oncology Group and is Co-Chair of the Commission for the Certification of Health Information Technology Oncology Workgroup.
Also newly elected are the following new members of the Board of Directors, to serve three-year terms beginning in June:
* Therese M. Mulvey, MD, FASCO, Physician-in-Chief at Southcoast Centers for Cancer Care in Massachusetts, to a Community Oncologist seat.
* Neal J. Meropol, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center & Case Western Reserve University, to the Medical Oncologist seat. He is also Associate Director for Clinical Research at Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Associate Director for Clinical Programs at University Hospital Seidman Cancer Center, and the Dr. Lester E. Coleman, Jr., Endowed Chair in Cancer Research and Therapeutics.
* Paulo Marcelo Gehm Hoff, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology and General Director of the ICESP-Instituto do Cancer do Estado de Sao Paulo at the University of Sao Paulo and General Director of the Oncology Center at the Hospital Sirio Libanes in Brazil, to one of the Undesignated Specialty seats.
And, the following three newly elected ASCO Nominating Committee members will serve three-year terms beginning in June:
* Roscoe F. Morton, MD, partner at Medical Oncology and Hematology Associates of Iowa and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa College of Medicine-Des Moines, to the Community Oncologist seat.
* Lee M. Ellis, MD, Professor of Surgery and Cancer Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the William C. Liedtke, Jr. Chair in Cancer Research, to one of the Undesignated Specialty seats.
* Kim Allyson Margolin, MD, Associate Director for the Hematology-Oncology Fellowship and Professor in the Division of Oncology at the University of Washington and Director of the University of Washington/Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Clinical Research Program in Melanoma and Kidney Cancer, to one of the Undesignated Specialty seats. She will also serve as Chair of the Nominating Committee.
ACS Epidemiologist Michael Thun Retires
Michael Thun, MD, MS, Vice President Emeritus of the American Cancer Society Surveillance and Epidemiology Research Program, retired in December. He had been with the Society since 1989.
"Michael's contribution to our understanding of cancer risk is hard to overstate," said ACS CEO John R. Seffrin, PhD. "For the last few decades, he's been the caretaker of an enormously valuable public health tool: the Cancer Prevention Studies. Millions of Americans volunteered for those studies, and Michael made sure their contribution was treated with respect, while unselfishly sharing this data to improve life for countless others."
Thun oversaw the analyses of the ACS Cancer Prevention Study 2, which informed much of the understanding of cancer prevention. His work has made significant contributions on the issues of aspirin as an anti-cancer agent, the adverse effects of obesity, and the evolving risks of smoking. During his 23 years at the Society, he authored or coauthored some 400 peer-reviewed scientific publications on a broad range of topics, which included publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature, Nature Genetics, and others.
He has served on numerous advisory groups for the Institute of Medicine, World Health Organization, International Agency for Research on Cancer, National Research Council, National Cancer Institute, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and is an Adjunct Professor at Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health, and the Winship Cancer Center. In 2010, he received the AACR-ACS Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention for his contributions over 30 years.
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