Frederick Alt, PhD, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, has been awarded the 2015 Szent-Gyorgyi Prize in Progress in Cancer Research from the National Foundation for Cancer Research. He was recognized for his work in cancer genetics over the past four decades.
"Dr. Alt has been a consistently outstanding scientist throughout his career, and this award recognizes his entire body of work," James Allison, PhD, Executive Director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center, winner of the 2014 Szent-Gyorgyi Prize, and Chair of this year's Prize Selection Committee, said in a news release.
"The genetic processes he described are central to understanding the mechanisms that cause cancer, and have ultimately led to an entire class of targeted therapy and associated diagnostics that are providing benefit to countless cancer patients."
Alt's work has focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of DNA damage repair and genomic instability. He discovered gene amplification in chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells. He also led work on the critical DNA repair mechanism "non-homologous end joining" and how it relates to translocations.
Alt, also the Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies; and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Carol Greider, PhD, the Daniel Nathans Professor and Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has received the Herbert and Maxine Block Memorial Lectureship Award for Achievement in Cancer from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. The $25,000 award is given annually to a renowned cancer researcher who is invited to OSUCCC to accept the award and deliver the annual Block Lecture.
"Dr. Greider's truly groundbreaking work has dramatically expanded our understanding of cancer-cell biology and opened the way to highly novel treatment strategies," Michael Caligiuri, MD, Director of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and CEO of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, said in a news release.
Greider received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. As a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, she successfully cloned and characterized the RNA component of telomerase, expanding the focus of her telomere research to include the role of telomere length in cellular senescence, cell death, and in cancer. At Johns Hopkins she studies the role of short telomeres in age-related disease and cancer, as well as the regulatory mechanism that maintains telomere length.
Andrew Futreal, PhD, Professor of Genomic Medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, has been awarded the institution's inaugural Jack and Beverly Randall Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research.
The $100,000 prize recognizes Futreal's work in large-scale systematic cancer genomics, which led to the identification of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast/ovarian cancer susceptibility genes, BRAF mutations in melanoma, ERBB2 mutations in non-small cell lung cancer, and multiple new cancer genes in renal cell carcinoma.
The award was established this year through an endowment from longtime MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors member Jack Randall and his wife, Beverly.
"It's particularly meaningful to be recognized for ideas that pushed at the edges of current approaches," Futreal said in a news release. "The idea of alternating the award between researchers and clinicians is exceptional because that's the way MD Anderson works. It's very much a partnership. It takes both clinicians and researchers to push things forward."
Futreal is co-leader of MD Anderson's Moon Shots Program and holds the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Chemistry. He has also served as Co-director of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K. prior to joining MD Anderson in 2012.
In other MD Anderson news, Christopher Logothetis, MD, Chair and Professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology, has been awarded the inaugural Finneran Family Prize. The $50,000 prize, which will be given annually after this year, recognizes an MD Anderson faculty member who conducts translational cancer research that turns laboratory findings into clinical treatments that benefit patients.
Logothetis has been a faculty member at MD Anderson since 1979 and is co-leader of MD Anderson's Prostate Cancer Moon Shot program.
"We created this endowment to honor faculty such as Dr. Logothetis who continue, year after year, providing hope to patients and their families for a future free of cancer," said Bill Finneran, who established the award with his family by creating the Finneran Family Endowment in Translational Research, a gift that supports the award. Bill Finneran is an MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors member and a prostate cancer survivor who has been under Logothetis' care for more than 20 years.
A team of researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has received a $7.75 million, four-year funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which will be used to conduct a pragmatic clinical trial evaluating the use of primary prophylactic colony stimulating factor to reduce the risk of serious infection in patients undergoing chemotherapy for breast, colorectal, or lung cancer. The trial will involve 2,880 patients from more than 30 clinics nationwide.
"Our goal is to improve adherence to clinical practice guidelines in the low- and high-risk chemotherapy settings, where the evidence for PP-CSF [primary prophylactic colony stimulating factor] use is well-established," the leader of the research team, Scott Ramsey, MD, PhD, Director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research and a health economist and internist in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in a news release.
"At the same time, we will generate new evidence on the benefits and risks of PP-CSF for commonly prescribed, intermediate-risk chemotherapy regimens where more evidence is needed for patients and providers to make informed decisions."
Stephen Baylin, MD, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research and Co-head of Cancer Biology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed to be Co-leader of the multi-institutional Van Andel Research Institute-Stand Up to Cancer Epigenetics Dream Team with VARI's Research Director, Peter Jones, PhD, DSc.
Baylin will oversee the VARI-SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team's research, which leverages the combined expertise of its members to develop new epigenetic therapies for cancer and move promising treatments into clinical trials. In addition to the new position, Baylin will continue his research at Johns Hopkins.
"I'm honored to work with such an exceptional group of scientists and clinicians to make the next generation of cancer therapies a reality," Baylin said in a news release. "I believe we're on the cusp of revolutionizing the standard of cancer care, and that targeting epigenetic abnormalities for this purpose will play a leading role."
The VARI-SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team is a collaboration between VARI, Johns Hopkins University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Fox Chase Cancer Center/Temple University, the University of Southern California, and Rigshospitalet/University of Copoenhagen, with peer review provided by SU2C and its scientific partner, the American Association for Cancer Research. The team will build on the work of the original SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team, which was established in 2009 and led by Baylin and Jones.
In addition to his VARI-SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team responsibilities, Baylin was also appointed Professor in VARI's Center for Epigenetics.
Also at MD Anderson, Patrick Hwu, MD, Chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology and Sarcoma Medical Oncology, has been named Division Head of Cancer Medicine. He began the new role in March, succeeding Richard Champlin, MD, who had been serving in the role on an ad interim basis.
"Dr. Hwu is an internationally respected physician-scientist who has 25 years of experience in the fields of tumor immunology, targeted therapies and translational studies," Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD, MD Anderson Provost and Executive Vice President, said in a news release. "He's a seasoned leader and has successfully chaired two departments and served as co-director of MD Anderson's Center for Cancer Immunology Research and its immunotherapy platform. He has also held endowed positions, including the Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Distinguished University Chair in Cancer Research."
Hwu joined MD Anderson in 2003 as the first Chair of Melanoma Medical Oncology. His research has focused on gene-modified T cells, and he published research on the first chimeric antigen receptor directed against cancer. He has produced novel, ongoing clinical trials based on his team's findings, including a study of combination T cell and dendritic cell therapy and a study of T cells modified with chemokine receptor genes to enhance their migration to the tumor.
His most recent preclinical studies have focused on combinations of immune checkpoint blockade and T cell therapy, as well as rational combinations of targeted therapies and immunotherapies.
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have received a $250,000 ovarian cancer research grant from The Kay Yow Cancer Fund, in collaboration with The V Foundation for Cancer Research. In recognition of the women's basketball community's support for Coach Kay Yow and the Kay Yow Cancer Fund, the Fund supports a women's cancer research grant at an institution based in the host city of the annual NCAA Women's Final Four.
This year's grant is awarded to Moffitt to continue research on the benefits of personalizing the care of older women with ovarian cancer. A check was presented to Martine Extermann, MD, PhD, a medical oncologist in the Senior Adult Oncology Program, at a news conference at the National Collegiate Athletic Association Women's Final Four press conference at Moffitt in February.
"I'm truly honored to receive such a generous award from the Kay Yow Cancer Fund," Extermann said in a news release. "With this support, we hope to better understand why ovarian cancer is more aggressive in older women and find treatments to fight those deleterious age-related mechanisms so that these women can live longer."
Meir Wetzler, MD, Roswell Park Leukemia Specialist, Dies at 60
Meir Wetzler, MD, FACP, Chief of the Leukemia Section in the Department of Medicine at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), died in February at age 60 after a skiing accident.
Wetzler had specialized in leukemia, myelodysplastic syndromes, and myeloproliferative disorders. And he had also served as Professor of Medicine in the School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo, Assistant Research Professor in the Immunology Program in Roswell Park's Graduate Division, and an adjunct faculty member in the Physician Assistant Department at D'Youville College in Buffalo, New York. Wetzler had been a member of the RPCI faculty since 1994.
Wetzler had been Principal Investigator on many clinical research studies. His research focused on the role of signal transducer and activation of transcription in leukemogenesis, cellular and humoral immune response to leukemic-associated antigens, and cytogenetics in acute myeloid leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He also participated in multicenter clinical studies of imatinib, which is now FDA-approved for the treatment of patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia. He authored or co-authored more than 100 journal articles, book chapters, and abstracts.
Wetzler was a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Treatment Committee, which help set the standard of care for patients with CML. He also served as a member of the Leukemia Core Committee of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology and a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Hematology, and the Israel Medical Association. He had also been named to Castle Connolly Medical Ltd.'s list of America's Top Doctors several times.
Wetzler is survived by his wife, Chana, and their four children: daughters Mor and Shira, and sons Adam and Modi.
The Dr. Meir Wetzler Memorial Fund for Leukemia Research has been established to benefit leukemia research, and a portion of the donations will be used to plant a tree in his memory in RPCI's Kaminski Park & Gardens.
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