The American Cancer Society has given its Medal of Honor to the following individuals, in recognition of their outstanding contributions in basic research, clinical research, cancer control, and philanthropy:
* Isaiah J. Fidler, DVM, PhD, Director of the Metastasis Research Laboratory and the R. E. "Bob" Smith Distinguished Chair in Cell Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was awarded the ACS Medal of Honor for Basic Research.
* Kathleen M. Foley, MD, attending neurologist in the Department of Neurology and in the Pain and Palliative Care Service in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, received the Medal of Honor for Clinical Research. She is also Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Clinical Pharmacology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She was recognized for her efforts to advance palliative care globally and treat patients with cancer pain.
* Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH, MPH, Dean and Alumni Distinguished Professor of Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, received the Medal of Honor for Cancer Control. She was recognized for her cancer research efforts in breast cancer screening, which has guided national research, practice, and policy for more than 20 years.
Joseph A. Sparano, MD, has been appointed Vice Chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group. In the role, he will help define and implement the group's research priorities, which include programs in Cancer Control and Outcomes, Therapeutic Studies, and Biomarker Sciences.
He is Professor of Medicine and Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Associate Chairman of the Department of Oncology at Montefiore Medical Center. He is also Associate Director for Clinical Research at the Einstein Cancer Center and leads the Einstein Breast Cancer Working Group; and is Vice Chair of the NCI Breast Cancer Correlative Science Committee and Vice Chair of the AIDS Malignancy Consortium.
Jindan Yu, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has received Agilent Technologies' fifth annual Early Career Professor Award-which includes $100,000 in unrestricted research funding. Using genome-wide technologies to measure cancer biology and deep sequencing to reveal distinct patterns of DNA methylation during various stages of prostate cancer progression, she is investigating whether the differentially methylated regions identified can predict the future course of the disease.
Pelayo Correa, MD, Professor and the Anne Potter Wilson Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, has received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Gastroenterological Association. His research has focused on gastric cancer pathogenesis and epidemiology, and he has played a central role in identifying causal pathways in malignancies of the gastrointestinal tract and the multistage mechanisms involved in gastric carcinogenesis.
Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center has received a research award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study a quality-of-life intervention program targeting Latina breast cancer survivors and their caregivers. The study is part of a portfolio of patient-centered research that PCORI says addresses its national research priorities and will provide patients with information that will help them make better informed decisions about their care.
Kristi Graves, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oncology at Georgetown Lombardi will lead the project in collaboration with Nueva Vida, a D.C.-area nonprofit organization that provides support services for Latinas with cancer.
"Many Latinas experience language and health literacy barriers, feelings of isolation, and beliefs that cancer leads to death," Graves said in a news release. "If our intervention is successful, the potential impact is large. We would be able to quickly share results with more than 150 local and national groups that provide care and support to tens of thousands of Latino families facing cancer."
John P. Leonard, MD, Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, has been named Chair of the Lymphoma Committee for the National Cancer Institute-sponsored Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology. In the role he will help guide the national agenda for lymphoma research by developing, supporting, and shepherding Phase II and Phase III clinical trials funded by the NCI.
A lymphoma specialist, he is Associate Dean for Clinical Research and Director of the Joint Clinical Trials Office at Weill Cornell and New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Richard T. Silver Distinguished Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Vice Chairman for Clinical Research in the Department of Medicine.
Daniel G. Haller, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Attending Physician at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of ASCO University for a three-year term that started in March. In this role, he will lead and oversee ASCO University's educational materials.
"The Editorial Board will be providing a lot of input-as members and oncologists ourselves, we understand the educational needs that we all share. But I plan to keep my ear to the ground to find out what people want, and I hope to get a lot of feedback," he said in a news release. He will be joined by seven Associate Editors.
Christopher Wild, PhD, has been re-elected Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization. Wild is a former Professor of Molecular Epidemiology and Director of the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health, and Therapeutics, and this will be his second five-year term.
"The particularly heavy burden projected to fall on the low- and middle--income countries makes it implausible to treat our way out of this disease. This is why the Agency will continue to work for cancer prevention in the coming years, all the way from identifying the causes through to evaluating interventions," he said in a news release.
Margaret Foti, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for Cancer Research has received the 2013 Stanley P. Reimann Honor Award from Fox Chase Cancer Center to recognize individuals who bring exceptional ingenuity and expertise to the cancer cause.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has named seven new members to serve on its Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer in Young Women. The Committee, chartered in 2010, advises the CDC in developing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based approaches to advance the understanding and awareness of breast cancer among young women. The following individuals will each serve two- to four-year terms:
* Raquel D. Arias, MD, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Keck School of Medicine and Clinical Associate Professor of Gerontology at the University of Southern California;
* Otis Webb Brawley, MD, FACP, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President for Research and Cancer Control Science for the American Cancer Society and a practicing oncologist;
* Elyse Spatz Caplan, MA, Director of Programs and Partnerships at Living Beyond Breast Cancer;
* Sue Friedman, DVM, founder and Executive Director of Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered national organization;
* Susan E. Kutner, MD, a general surgeon with a subspecialty practice in breast surgery at the Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center and Chair of the Kaiser Permanente Interregional Breast Care Leaders Group;
* Karen Meneses, PhD, RN, FAAN, Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Co-Leader of the Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program at UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center; and
* Rochelle Lee Shoretz, JD, Founder and Executive Director of Sharsheret, the national non-profit organization dedicated to serving the unique concerns of Jewish women with breast cancer.
The following four individuals have joined University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center and the University of New Mexico Cancer Center:
* Wadih Arap, MD, PhD, formerly of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, will be Deputy Director of the UNM Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Internal Medicine in the School of Medicine. He has expertise in the treatment of prostate cancer and his research focuses on the development of new targeted cancer drugs.
* Renata Pasqualini, PhD, also formerly of MD Anderson Cancer Center, will be Associate Director for Translational Research and will co-lead the UNM Cancer Center's Program in Experimental Therapeutics and Drug Discovery. She will also be Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and hold the Maralyn S. Budke Endowed Chair Cancer Experimental Therapeutics. She specializes in cancer biology and drug development, having developed diagnostic and imaging tools for cancer and obesity.
* Martin J. Edelman, MD, FACP, formerly of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center, will be Professor of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Internal Medicine, Associate Director for Clinical Research at the UNM Cancer Center, a co-leader of the UNM Cancer Center's Program in Lung Cancer and Aerodigestive Malignancies. He will also lead the New Mexico Cancer Care Alliance, a collaborative statewide cancer clinical trials network between the UNM Cancer Center and several community healthcare systems. His clinical and scientific research focuses in lung and thoracic cancers.
* Anita Kinney, PhD, formerly at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, will be Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Director for Cancer Control and Population Sciences in the UNM Cancer Center.
She will also hold the Victor and Ruby Hansen Surface Endowed Chair in Cancer Population Science and assist in the development of the new College of Public Health at UNM. Kinney's research interests focus on discovering ways to ensure optimal translation of genomic and other scientific discoveries to populations and communities to prevent cancer and improve cancer-related outcomes.
Lyda Hill, has pledged $50 million to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's Moon Shots Program, the largest single private philanthropic contribution to date in support of the effort. Her gift will support the lung cancer team's effort to develop more reliable, low-cost screenings that can be available in community clinics, including blood-based biomarkers to detect the disease at its earliest stages; the breast/ovarian cancer team's integrated program to screen patients for BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations, as well as to prescribe new personalized therapies; and will have other applications across the program. In recognition of her gift, MD Anderson will name the Lyda Hill Cancer Prevention Center in her honor.
"I'm excited about the Moon Shots Program," Hill said in a news release. "It represents a different direction for research that crosses disciplines and offers new hope for breaking cancer's codes. I'm pleased to offer my support to this historic effort."
The Ben & Catherine Ivy Foundation has awarded the following individuals grants and funding for brain cancer research in 2012:
* Greg D. Foltz, MD, Director of the Ben & Catherine Ivy Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at the Swedish Medical Center, $2.5 million over three years;
* John Carpten, PhD, and David Craig, PhD, both of the Translational Genomics Research Institute for a collaborative effort with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, UCLA, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and University of Utah, $5 million over five years; and
* Brandy Wells, Manager of Science Education and Outreach at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, has received $45,000 annually for the Ivy Neurological Sciences Internship Program.
Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, has been named the first United Technologies Cor-pora-tion Professor in Cancer Research at Yale Cancer Center. The new endowed professorship is funded by a $3 million donation from United Technologies Corp.
Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network Young Investigator Awards
The Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network has announced three recipients of its Young Investigator Awards, which are intended to support the development of outstanding research scientists and clinical cancer research investigators who have demonstrated a commitment to the understanding and treatment of bladder cancer.
Each of the following awards is $100,000, given over a two-year period:
* David DeGraff, PhD, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, received the BCAN Young Investigator Award for his research "Transcriptional Control of Bladder Cancer Tumorgenesis;"
* Debashis Sahoo, PhD, an Instructor at Stanford University, received the Raymond and Maria Floyd Family Young Investigator Award for his research "High resolution molecular analysis of CD-47 mediated immune escape in bladder cancer;" and
* Gopa Iyer, MD, a Clinical Instructor at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, received the James Family Young Investigator Award for his research "Identifying Predictors of Response to mTOR-targeted Therapies in Bladder Cancer.
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