Mark P. Carol, MD, has been named the American Society for Radiation Oncology's 2012 Honorary Member in recognition of his more than 30 years of experience in health care services and his contributions to field of radiation oncology.
"His groundbreaking approach to the development of IMRT and IGRT [image-guided radiation therapy] has provided tremendous benefits for radiation oncology patients. He is most deserving of this year's honor," said ASTRO 2011-2012 President and current Chairman of the Board of Directors Michael L. Steinberg, MD, FASTRO.
Donald M. Berwick, MD, has been awarded the 2012 Gustav O. Lienhard Award by the Institute of Medicine to recognize his leadership in establishing and expanding the field of clinical quality improvement. He co-founded the National Demonstration Project on Quality Improvement in Health Care in 1986, and then helped establish the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
"Dr. Berwick's unwillingness to accept mediocre outcomes as the norm in health care delivery has led to comprehensive reforms and streamlined processes that have significantly reduced rates of medical errors throughout the health system," IOM President Harvey V. Fineberg, MD, PhD, said in a news release.
The AACR-Prevent Cancer Foundation Award for Excellence in Cancer Prevention Research was presented to Jack Cuzick, PhD, for his contributions to cancer prevention research in breast, cervical, colorectal, and prostate cancers. His current work focuses on developing better breast cancer risk-prediction models and the role of metformin, bisphosphonates, and extended use of aromatase inhibitors in breast cancer survivors to prevent late recurrence and new tumors.
Cuzick is now Head of the Cancer Research U.K. Center for Cancer Prevention and the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine at Queen Mary University of London. He also serves as President of the International Society for Cancer Prevention.
Margaret Foti, PhD, CEO of the American Association for Cancer Research, has received the National Brain Tumor Society's Founders Award for Excellence in Cancer Research for her efforts and leadership in the cancer research community.
This year's winners of the Cancer Research Institute's William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology were given to Laurie H. Glimcher, MD, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University; Ken Murphy, MD, PhD, the Eugene Opie First Centennial Professor of Pathology and Immunology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Washington University School of Medicine; and Richard Flavell, PhD, FRS, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the Sterling Professor and Department Chair of Immunobiology at Yale University. They were recognized for research defining the transcription factors that regulate CD4+ T cell differentiation.
The Gynecologic Oncology Group has awarded the Foundation for Gynecologic Oncology a $100,000 grant for research and education.
The Association of American Cancer Institutes has presented the Distinguished Public Service Awards to:
* Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), for his leadership in promoting cancer research as a congressman, and for his service on the Senate Appropriations Committee and as a member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services; and
* U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), for introducing the Education and Awareness Requires Learning Young Act (EARLY Act, H.R. 1740), which directs the CDC to develop and implement a national education campaign about the threat breast cancer poses to all young women and the heightened risks among certain ethnic, cultural, and racial groups. She announced her personal battle with breast cancer in 2009.
The Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration has received a Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from the National Cancer Institute. The grant provides $11.5 million over five years to support the not-for-profit consortium's sarcoma translational research. Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, Professor of Surgery and Director of the Sarcoma Research Center at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is the SARC SPORE's Program Director and Principal Investigator.
The collaboration brings together a broad-based multi-disciplinary investigative team including multiple researchers from the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, the NCI, the University of Michigan Cancer Center, and MD Anderson, as well as key leadership from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Cancer Research and Biostatistics (CRAB) organization, and Columbia University.
The Molecular Imaging Center at Washington University School of Medicine and the Siteman Cancer Center has received a five-year, $7.1 million NCI grant to develop innovative ways to study cancer and other disorders by monitoring the activity of cells and proteins inside the body. The grant will fund four to six pilot projects per year, core facilities that assist researchers, and these four projects:
* A study to develop methods to predict and prevent graft-versus-host disease by investigating the disease in immune cells, led by David Piwnica-Worms, MD, PhD, and John DiPersio, MD, PhD;
* A study on how the Notch protein contributes to cancer, led by Raphael Kopan, PhD;
* A study on the connections among stress, cancer, and a gene that regulates cells' life cycles, led by Helen Piwnica-Worms, PhD; and
* A study on the links between immune system inflammation and cancer, led by Lee Ratner, MD, PhD.
Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University and a Siteman Cancer Center researcher, has received a National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award providing $3.8 million over five years. He is collaborating with Siteman physicians to study the use of photoacoustic tomography (an imaging technique he developed that relies on light and sound that allows more detailed images of tumors deeper inside the body) for identifying the sentinel lymph node for breast cancer staging; monitoring early response to chemotherapy; imaging melanomas, and imaging the gastrointestinal tract.
The NCI has chosen Brian Haab, PhD, Head of Van Andel Institute's Laboratory of Cancer Immunodiagnostics, to lead its $2.3 million project to develop new molecular biomarkers for pancreatic cancer. He will collaborate with David Smith, PhD, of Emory University on the five-year study, along with researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Palo Alto Research Center, the University of Georgia, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Moffitt Cancer Center and the Ponce School of Medicine and Health Sciences have each received a $7-million NCI grant to work together to eliminate cancer-related health disparities affecting Hispanics. The focus will be to develop and improve cancer care outcomes for Hispanic cancer patients in Puerto Rico and Florida who are underserved with respect to cancer care, personalized medicine, and participation in clinical research.
Teresita Munoz-Antonia, PhD, associate member of Moffitt's Molecular Oncology and Drug Discovery Program, and W. J. Pledger, PhD, senior member of Moffitt's Molecular Oncology and Drug Discovery Program, will be Moffitt's principal investigators for this grant. And, Jaime Matta, PhD, Professor and Principal Investigator in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, and Toxicology, and Jose A. Torres-Ruiz, PhD, Chairman and Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, will be Ponce's PIs. The five-year grants are supported by the NCI's Comprehensive Partnership to Advance Cancer Health Equity.
The North Shore-LIJ Health System has established the Center for Melanoma and Rare Skin Cancers at its Cancer Institute to offer multidisciplinary care and focus on skin cancer risk prevention strategies and research. Services will include advanced surgical treatment, precise radiation treatment, and medical oncology, such as immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Mansoor Beg, MD, is the center's new Chief.
David Carbone, MD, PhD, has left Vanderbilt University, where he led the Thoracic Oncology Program, directed the experimental therapeutics program, and was Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, to join Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, where he will develop and lead the new Thoracic Oncology Center.
Wasif M. Saif, MD, has joined Tufts University School of Medicine as Director of the GI Oncology Program and Leader of Experimental Therapeutics. He specializes in caring for pancreatic cancer and colorectal cancer, and his research focuses on the biochemical and molecular pharmacology of antimetabolites and investigational anticancer agents. He was previously at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons/New York Presbyterian Hospital, Yale University School of Medicine, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Dennis Weisenburger, MD, has joined City of Hope as Chair and Professor in the Department of Pathology. He was most recently at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, as Professor of Pathology and Microbiology.
Elizabeth Eklund, MD, Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been named Chair of the NIH's Molecular Oncogenesis Study Section of the Center for Scientific Review.
Dietlind Wahner-Roedler, MD, an internal medicine generalist, and Andrea Wahner Hendrickson, MD, a medical oncologist, became the first mother-daughter physician duo at Mayo Clinic when Wahner Hendrickson joined the staff earlier this year. When her mother joined Mayo in 1969, she was one of only three women in physician roles there. "It was unusual to be a woman and a physician before, but not anymore," Wahner-Roedler said in a news release. "I think we are the first of many to come."
This year's Prix Galien USA Award for Best Biotechnology Product was given to Yervoy (ipilimumab, made by Bristol Myers Squibb).
IOM Elects New Members and Foreign Associates
The Institute of Medicine has elected 70 new members and 10 foreign associates. New members are elected by current active members through a selection process that recognizes individuals for major contributions to the advancement of the medical sciences, health care, and public health. Newly elected members from the oncology community include:
* R. Daniel Beauchamp, MD, Vanderbilt University;
* Shelley L. Berger, PhD, University of Pennsylvania;
* Bruce R. Blazar, MD, University of Minnesota;
* John M. Carethers, MD, University of Michigan Health System;
* Lynda Chin, MD, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center;
* Don W. Cleveland, PhD, Ludwig Institute for Cancer esearch;
* Lisa DeAngelis, MD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center;
* Michael C. Fiore, MD, MPH, Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, University of isconsin;
* Thomas R. Fleming, PhD, University of Washington;
* Jennifer R. Grandis, MD, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine;
* Donald E. Ingber, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston;
* Carl H. June, MD, Perelman School of Medicine, Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania;
* Paula M. Lantz, PhD, George Washington University;
* Andrew I. Schafer, MD, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York Presbyterian Hospital;
* Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD, Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania;
* Gregg L. Semenza, MD, PhD, Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine;
* David Spiegel, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine; and
* Diana J. Wilkie, RN, PhD, FAAN, University of Illinois.
Newly elected foreign associates from the oncology community are:
* Jian-Ping Dai, MD, Beijing Neurosurgical Institute and Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital University of Medical Sciences; and
* Fritz H. Schroder, MD, PhD, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
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