The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will honour the following cancer researchers, physician-scientists, advocates, and journalists during its annual meeting to be held April 14-19 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
Carl H June, MD, FAACR – Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research
June, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is the Richard W Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is being recognised for his revolutionary contributions to developing the first gene-edited cell-based therapy for cancer that involves the genetic re-engineering of a patient’s own T cells to combat their disease, and for demonstrating that adoptive T-cell therapy can induce remission and in some cases cure patients with advanced cancer.
Kathryn E Wellen, PhD – Outstanding Achievement in Basic Cancer Research
Wellen is an investigator at the Penn Epigenetics Institute and Vice Chair and Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is being recognised for her instrumental contributions to delineating the fundamental links between cellular metabolism, epigenome regulation, and cancer onset and progression, including her identification of the link between PI3K/AKT signalling and AKT-dependent ATP-citrate lyase phosphorylation, resulting in elevated histone acetylation and upregulation of cancer cell adhesion and migration genes.
Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD, FAACR – Outstanding Achievement in Blood Cancer Research
Dalla-Favera, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics; the Percy and Joanne Uris Professor of Clinical Medicine; Professor of pathology and cell biology, microbiology and immunology, and genetics and development; and member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University. He is being recognised for his fundamental discoveries dedicated to characterising the genetic drivers of human B-cell lymphomas and for uncovering new avenues for cancer prevention and therapy that have been routinely exploited clinically to diagnose and determine novel therapeutic strategies for B-cell lymphoma.
Carolyn R Bertozzi, PhD – Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research
Bertozzi is the Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H, the Anne T and Robert M Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Professor of Chemistry and, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology and of Radiology at Stanford University. She is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, she is being recognised for her groundbreaking contributions to the development of biorthogonal chemistry, profiling cell surface glycosylation alterations commonly associated with cancer, inflammation, and bacterial infection, and for spearheading the development of novel diagnostic probes for the study of cancer-immune cell interactions and immunotherapy development.
Polly A Newcomb, PhD, MPH – Daniel D Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research
Newcomb is professor emeritus, Cancer Prevention Program, Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and professor emeritus, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Washington. She is being recognised for her tireless support of cancer education and training, highlighted by her many years of mentorship and encouragement of countless graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career investigators, including many researchers from underrepresented minority groups.
AACR Distinguished Public Service Award for Exceptional Leadership in Cancer Advocacy
Phyllis Pettit Nassi, MSW
Phyllis Pettit Nassi, MSW, is the Associate Director, Research and Science, Special Populations at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. She is being recognised for her longstanding commitment as a patient advocate for American Indian tribes across the Mountain West and beyond, and for an unwavering commitment to improving health literacy and clinical trial enrolment among American Indian populations that has profoundly impacted these underserved communities and drastically improved their quality of life and access to cancer care.
Jane Perlmutter, PhD, MBA
Jane Perlmutter, PhD, MBA, is President and Founder of the Gemini Group. A breast cancer survivor herself, she is being recognised for her unparalleled leadership as a patient advocate, including through the AACR’s Scientist↔Survivor Program; her dedication to improving the patient experience through innovative clinical trial designs, including I-SPY2; and for efforts to ensure that the patient voice is included in research and trial design, accelerating patient access to new treatments, and dramatically improving their quality of life and overall survivorship.
Arul M Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD, FAACR – James S Ewing-Thelma B Dunn Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pathology in Cancer Research
Chinnaiyan, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, American Cancer Society Research Professor, and SP Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Urology at the University of Michigan. He also serves as the inaugural Director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology. He is being recognised for illuminating research contributions to defining the links between chromosomal abnormalities and cancer, including his discovery of TMPRSS2-ETS gene fusions in prostate cancer, and for pioneering the use of pathological and bioinformatic methodologies to diagnose and track prostate cancer onset and progression.
Elizabeth M Jaffee, MD, FAACR – Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research
Jaffee, a Fellow of the AACR Academy and former AACR President (2018-2019), is the Dana and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli Professor in Oncology and Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) at Johns Hopkins University, as well as inaugural Director of the Convergence Institute and Associate Director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at SKCCC. She is also a Professor of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Co-director of the Skip Viragh Center for Pancreas Cancer Clinical Research and Patient Care, and Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Jaffee is being recognised for her exceptional leadership, extraordinary record of service to the cancer community, and pioneering research discoveries, including the development of innovative approaches to antigen discovery and the identification of two novel pancreatic cancer proteins that are promising targets for immunotherapy, mesothelin and Annexin A2.
African Caribbean Cancer Consortium Team – Team Science Award
The African Caribbean Cancer Consortium Team is being recognised for their collective contributions to addressing cancer and health disparities by furthering the study of viral, genetic, environmental, and lifestyle risk factors for cancer in patient populations of African descent that have demonstrated far-reaching implications for the improvement of cancer aetiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention in Black patient populations worldwide.
The team members are: Camille Ragin, PhD, MPH, Team Leader (pictured), Kellie Alleyne-Mike, MD, Kimlin T Ashing, PhD, Aviane Auguste, PhD, Rishika Banydeen, MPH, Raleigh Butler, MD, Samuel Gathere, MD, Sophia George, PhD, Natalie S Greaves, PhD, Tamara Green, MD, Darron AC Halliday, MD, Maria D Jackson, PhD, Patricia D Jones, MD, Rukia Kibaya, MSc, Evans Kiptanui, MS, Anne CR Korir, MPH, Delroy M Louden, Phd, Valerie Odero-Marah, PhD, JoAnn S Oliver, PhD, RN, CNE, FAAN, Veronica Roache, SRN, SCM, Robin Roberts, MD, Samuel T Slewion, MA, Charles G Waihenya, MD and Charnita Zeigler-Johnson, PhD, MPH.
Patricia A Ganz, MD, FAACR – American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention
Ganz, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is a Distinguished Professor of Health Policy & Management at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health, Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and Associate Director for Population Science at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is being recognised for her steadfast commitment to enhancing cancer prevention, characterising late effects of cancer treatment, and instrumental contributions to improving the field of cancer patient survivorship through advocacy efforts to establish guideline and policy changes that have positively impacted cancer patient symptom management, supportive care, and quality of life.
E John Wherry, PhD – Cancer Research Institute Lloyd J Old Award in Cancer Immunology
Wherry is chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Director of the Institute for Immunology, and Founding Director of the Immune Health Project in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is being recognised for his essential cancer immunology research findings dedicated to defining the genetic and epigenetic control mechanisms of T-cell exhaustion that have contributed to the elucidation of PD-L1 blockade and helped guide the development of immunotherapy treatments for cancer patients, including several FDA-approved checkpoint inhibitor therapies for multiple cancer indications.
M Celeste Simon, PhD, FAACR – GHA Clowes Award for Outstanding Basic Cancer Research
Simon, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is the Arthur H Rubenstein, MBBCh, Professor in Cell and Developmental Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Scientific Director at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute and Associate Director, Shared Resources, at the Abramson Cancer Center. She is being recognised for her lauded research contributions that have informed the understanding of cancer metabolism, oxygen biology, and tumour hypoxia resulting in the development of murine cancer models and the elucidation of the role of hypoxia-inducible factor-2 alpha in tumorigenesis, which has since led to the development of the FDA-approved therapeutic belzutifan for the treatment of von Hippel–Lindau disease-associated renal cell carcinoma.
Andrea Schietinger, PhD – Irving Weinstein Foundation Distinguished Lectureship
Schietinger is an associate member of the Immunology Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an Associate Professor of Immunology & Microbial Pathogenesis at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. She is being recognised for her unparalleled contributions to elucidating the fundamental cellular mechanisms of immune evasion, including demonstrating how antigen-specific T cells evade immune-suppressive mechanisms in normal tissues, which has subsequently fuelled the development of innovative strategies for molecular and immune-based targeted therapies for the treatment of cancer.
Melissa M Hudson, MD – Joseph H Burchenal Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Cancer Research
Hudson is a faculty member, Director of the Cancer Survivorship Division, Associate Director, Population Sciences, and The Charles E Williams Endowed Chair of Oncology-Cancer Survivorship at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She is being recognised for her unrivalled clinical research involving haematological malignancies affecting children, adolescents, and young adults that has led to the establishment of the St Jude Lifetime Cohort Study. This ongoing study catalogues comprehensive clinical data from over 6,000 five-year survivors of paediatric cancer, information that continues to be translated into practice-changing guidelines for paediatric cancer survivors.
Selwyn M Vickers, MD, FACS – Minorities in Cancer Research Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship
Vickers is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is being recognised for his celebrated contributions to the understanding and targeting of pancreas cancer metastasis, including work that has assisted with the development of minnelide, a pro-drug of triptolide for the treatment of pancreas and gastrointestinal cancers that is currently in Phase II clinical trials. He is also being recognised for his steadfast commitment to leading research dedicated to understanding how to eliminate cancer and health disparities.
Robert D Schreiber, PhD, FAACR – Princess Takamatsu Memorial Lectureship
Schreiber, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is the Andrew M and Jane M Bursky Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology and Director of the Bursky Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs at the Washington University School of Medicine. He is being recognised for his indelible research findings at Siteman Cancer Center that have led to an improved understanding of immune surveillance in cancer pathogenesis, including the definition of the physiologic roles and mechanisms of action of Type I interferon and Interferon gamma in cancer-associated immune responses, and for establishing the concept of ‘immunoediting’ that has since fuelled the development of cancer immunotherapeutics.
Olivier Delattre, MD, PhD – St Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research
Delattre is the Director of the SIREDO Oncology Center and the research unit director of the Cancer, Heterogeneity, Instability and Plasticity (CHIP) unit at Inserm/Institut Curie. He is being recognised for his paramount research dedicated to identifying the genetic drivers of paediatric cancer, including demonstrating the role of the EWS-FLI1 translocation in the onset of Ewing sarcoma and further characterising the role of various somatic mutations in the pathogenesis of neuroblastoma and other paediatric solid tumours.
Jun J Yang, PhD – Waun Ki Hong Award for Outstanding Achievement in Translational and Clinical Cancer Research
Yang is a faculty member, Vice Chair of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Endowed Chair in Pharmacogenomics, Director, Pharmacogenomics Program and Associate Director, Hematological Malignancies R32 Training Program at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is being recognised for his inspiring contributions to genomic studies dedicated to analysing therapeutic response rates in multi-ethnic paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia patient populations, which have resulted in the identification of a large number of genomic loci responsible for driving therapeutic response variability. These findings are now being leveraged to predict treatment efficacy and toxicity in paediatric cancer populations.
Cory Abate-Shen, PhD – Women in Cancer Research Charlotte Friend Lectureship
Abate-Shen is the Robert Sonneborn Professor of Medicine, Professor of urologic sciences, pathology and cell biology, and systems biology in the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Institute for Cancer Genetics, and Chair of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Columbia University. She is being recognised for her pioneering research dedicated to discovering and defining the role of NKX3.1 as a master regulator of prostate differentiation and cancer initiation and progression, for generating unique and reliable murine bladder and prostate cancer models, and for steadfast commitment to serving as a leader, mentor, and supporter of women in cancer research.
Tak W Mak, PhD, FAACR – Pezcoller Foundation-AACR International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research
Mak, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, as well as a University Professor In the departments of medical biophysics and immunology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a Professor in the department of pathology at the University of Hong Kong. He is being recognised for fundamental contributions to the fields of immunology, cancer biology, and cancer therapy, including cloning the beta chain of the human T-cell receptor and creating genetically modified mouse strains to elucidate the role of the immune system in tumorigenesis. He also characterised two novel kinases, PLK4 and TTK, now promising targets in Phase II clinical trials, and CTLA-4, a negative regulator of T-cell activation, later applied to the development of immune checkpoint blockade therapy.
June L Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism
The winners are:
Auditory Journalism:
- “‘No Mercy’ Chapter 5: With Rural Hospital Gone, Cancer Care Means a Daylong Trek” – Sarah Jane Tribble, Taunya English, Kaiser Health News
- Greg Munteanu (Photo), Saint Louis Public Radio
Magazine
- “One Man’s Search for the DNA Data That Could Save His Life” – Sarah Elizabeth Richards, WIRED
- “Detecting Cancer Using Limited Resources” – Emily Sohn, Nature
Newspaper
- “They found a lump. Doctors said not to worry. These are the stories of men with breast cancer.” – David Oliver,USA Today
Online/multimedia:
- “With Bab AlHawa Border Closed, Syrians Are Deprived of Cancer Treatment” – Ali Al Ibrahim, Raseef22 and SIRAJ
- “The trust-builder: a cancer center director’s try-it-all strategy for breaking the barriers between research and Black patients” – Angus Chen, STAT News
- “Chadwick Boseman’s tragedy is America’s tragedy: In colorectal cancer hot spots, young men are dying at higher rates” – Nicholas St Fleur, STAT News
