Recipients of the 2009 ASCO Special Awards have been announced. Clara D. Bloomfield, MD, (left) will be given the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award; the Science of Oncology Award will go to Bert Vogelstein, MD; Olufunmilayo Olopade, MBBS, will receive the ASCO-American Cancer Society Award; the B.J. Kennedy Award for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology will be given to Martine Extermann, MD, PhD; the Pediatric Oncology Award will be presented to William E. Evans, PharmD, and Mary V. Relling, PharmD; John H. Glick, MD, will take home the Distinguished Achievement Award; Diane S. Blum, MSW, is the recipient of Partners in Progress Award; Richard Pazdur, MD, will be given the Special Recognition Award.
Also at ASCO 2009 in Orlando, Statesman Awards will be bestowed upon Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, and Scott M. Lippman, MD, from Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; Barbara L. McAneny, MD, from Albuquerque’s New Mexico Cancer Center; Monica Morrow, MD, from New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and Jamie Hayden Von Roenn, MD, from Chicago’s Northwestern University.
Nancy Soto has been named the director of the protocol development and regulatory compliance department of the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group. Ms. Soto comes to RTOG from Schering-Plough’s oncology phase IV global clinical trials management.
The Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology has elected three new members to its executive committee: Karen L. De Amorim Bernstein, MD, of Albert Einstein College in New York; Luqman Dad, MD (below) at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.; and Vinai Gondi, MD, from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. They will each serve two-year terms with ARRO, which is affiliated with the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).
Frank L. Meyskens, Jr., MD, was honored with the 2008 American Association for Cancer Research-Prevent Cancer Foundation Award for Excellence in Cancer Prevention Research. Dr. Meyskens is director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He also serves as the associate vice chancellor of health sciences at UCI’s College of Health Sciences.
INTERNATIONAL
Sir Walter Bodmer, PhD (below), and Bernard Fox, PhD, have been appointed to the advisory panel of biopharmaceutical company Micromet, Inc. Sir Walter was chair of genetics of Oxford University in the UK and director-general of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Dr. Fox is president of the International Society for the Biological Therapy of Cancer and chief of the laboratory of molecular and tumor immunology at the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center in Portland, Ore. Micromet, based in Bethesda, Md., develops antibody-driven treatment for cancer, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases.
