American Association for Cancer Research Announces 2019 Class of Fellows of the AACR Academy

PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) today announced its newly elected class of Fellows of the AACR Academy.

The mission of the AACR Academy is to recognize and honor distinguished scientists whose scientific contributions have propelled significant innovation and progress against cancer. The Fellows of the AACR Academy serve as a global brain trust, helping to advance the mission of the AACR to prevent and cure all cancers through research, education, communication, collaboration, science policy and advocacy, and funding for cancer research.

All Fellows are nominated and elected through an annual peer-review process conducted solely by existing Fellows of the AACR Academy and ratified by the AACR Academy Steering Committee and AACR Executive Committee. This process involves a rigorous assessment of each candidate’s scientific accomplishments in cancer research and cancer-related sciences. Consideration for election and induction into the AACR Academy is restricted to individuals whose work has had a significant and enduring impact on the cancer research field.

“The 2019 class of elected Fellows encompasses 22 giants in the field of cancer research, and we are thrilled to have them join the ranks of the prestigious AACR Academy. Through groundbreaking work across the entire cancer continuum, these individuals have contributed immensely to the understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer,” said Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), chief executive officer of the AACR. “We look forward to their induction and to celebrating their enduring global impact on cancer research.”

Members of the newly elected 2019 class of Fellows of the AACR Academy include:

• Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD, Executive Vice President; Deputy Director, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle
  For pioneering the development of transformative therapies for leukemias, lymphomas, and other blood cancers, and for leading the first clinical trial demonstrating the utility of autologous bone marrow transplantation.
• Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Medicine; Senior Vice President and Vice Dean for Science; Chief Scientific Officer, NYU Langone Health, New York
  For delineating the fundamental mechanisms by which Ras oncogenes regulate cellular proliferation, survival, metabolism, and signaling, and for defining Ras-mediated modulation of these processes in pancreatic cancer initiation and progression.
• Lisa M. Coussens, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Cell, Development, and Cancer Biology; Associate Director of Basic Research, Knight Cancer Institute; Oregon Health & Science University, Portland
  For pioneering studies on the tumor microenvironment, and for determining the roles of matrix metalloproteinases and immune cells in promoting tumor progression and defining the importance of chronic inflammation in cancer, thus identifying therapeutic targets for intervention.
• George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, Dean, Faculty of Medicine; Caroline Shields Walker Professor of Medicine; Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  For demonstrating the role of the BCR/ABL oncogene in the pathogenesis of chronic myeloid leukemia, and for his creation of pluripotent stem cell-based disease models to improve drug and transplantation therapies for malignant and genetic diseases.
• Gerard I. Evan, PhD, FRS, Sir William Dunn Professor of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry and Cambridge Cancer Center, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  For elucidating the molecular dichotomy of the Myc protein as an inducer of both cell proliferation and cell death, and for generating inducible mouse models capable of recapitulating genetic insults commonly observed in cancer.
• Gordon J. Freeman, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Researcher, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston
  For groundbreaking contributions to the discovery of the PD-1 signaling pathway and the PD-1 ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2, and for spotlighting the involvement of this pathway in tumor evasion of immunosurveillance.
• Levi A. Garraway, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President, Oncology Research & Development and LRL Novel Target Research, Lilly Oncology, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis
  For visionary contributions to the establishment of genomics-driven precision cancer medicine by pioneering high-throughput adaptation of genomic technologies to profile human tumors to identify actionable cancer gene mutations, allowing for precise patient population stratification.
• Mel F. Greaves, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology, The Institute of Cancer Research, London
  For highlighting the biological underpinnings of pediatric leukemia onset and clonal evolution, and for demonstrating how exposure to infection and specific genetic mutations correlate with cancer susceptibility and leukemogenesis in pediatric populations.
• Philip D. Greenberg, MD, Professor, Departments of Medicine/Oncology and Immunology, University of Washington School of Medicine; Head, Program in Immunology, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle
  For revealing the immunobiology of host T-cell responses to malignant tumors and pathogenic viral infections, and for providing crucial insights into the biological mechanisms by which T cells distinguish tumor cells from normal cells, leading to the development and advancement of adoptive T-cell therapy approaches in cancer.
• Daniel A. Haber, MD, PhD, Director, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center; Kurt J. Isselbacher Professor of Oncology, Harvard Medical School; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston
  For characterizing EGFR mutations in lung cancer, biological properties of circulating tumor cells in cancer, and WT1 and WTX tumor suppressors in Wilms’ tumor, and for contributing to the fundamental understanding of molecular carcinogenesis and drug sensitivity to inform the development of molecularly targeted therapeutics.
• Jules A. Hoffmann, PhD, Professor; Chair of Integrative Biology, University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, Strasbourg, France
  For his seminal, Nobel Prize winning discovery of the receptors of innate immunity and their roles in detecting microorganisms and subsequently activating signaling pathways that control innate immune responses.
• Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, Deputy Director General; Distinguished Professor, Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study, Kyoto, Japan
  For his groundbreaking, Nobel Prize winning discovery of the PD-1 protein and its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2, and for demonstrating the ability of anti-PD-L1 antibodies to inhibit tumor growth, igniting a renaissance in the examination of the role of the immune system in cancer.
• Scott W. Lowe, PhD, Chair, Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York
  For illuminating the molecular mechanisms governing tumor suppression, and for establishing preclinical mouse models allowing for the genetic validation of cancer targets.
• Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, Nationwide Foundation Endowed Chair in Genomic Medicine; Co-Executive Director, Institute for Genomic Medicine, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio
  For her trailblazing efforts to develop and apply next-generation sequencing technologies to the characterization of cancer genomes, which has better defined the landscape of germline and somatic alterations and helped drive new treatment strategies.
• Larry Norton, MD, Senior Vice President, Office of the President; Medical Director, Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center; Norna S. Sarofim Chair of Clinical Oncology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York
  For his vast contributions to breast cancer management and clinical cancer research, and for constructing mathematical models to predict tumor growth based on Gompertzian growth kinetics, leading to improved understanding of the functional relationship between chemotherapeutic dose, tumor size, treatment sensitivity, and dose schedule.
• Moshe Oren, PhD, Director, Moross Integrated Cancer Center; Professor, Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
  For his pivotal research involving the cloning of the gene that encodes p53, and for his landmark biochemical and biological discoveries that have revealed the basis for the ability of p53 to act as a tumor suppressor, as well as the consequences of p53 inactivation in cancer.
• Robert D. Schreiber, PhD, Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology; Professor of Molecular Microbiology; Founding Director, Bursky Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs; Co-Leader, Tumor Immunology Program, Siteman Comprehensive Cancer Center; Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
  For demonstrating that the immune system plays an important role in tumor development by investigating tumor growth in adaptive immune system-deficient RAG2 knockout mice, and for developing and championing the concept of “cancer immunoediting,” proving that tumors may escape immune recognition via antigenicity loss.
• Arlene H. Sharpe, MD, PhD, George Fabyan Professor of Comparative Pathology; Chair, Department of Immunology; Co-Director, Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School, Boston
  For defining how T-cell costimulatory and coinhibitory molecules and pathways regulate immune responses, and for demonstrating that T cells are required not only to activate antimicrobial and antitumor immunity, but also to repress immune responses to combat tissue transplantation rejection and autoimmune disease.
• Louis M. Staudt, MD, PhD, Co-Chief, Lymphoid Malignancies Branch; NIH Distinguished Investigator; Director, Center for Cancer Genomics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland
  For dissecting the fundamental nature of B-cell lymphoma and human lymphoid malignancies, and for highlighting how gene expression profiling may be used to identify distinct cancer types and subtypes, leading to the use of RNAi technologies to develop novel targeted therapeutics for the treatment of hematologic malignancies.
• Bruce W. Stillman, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer; William J. Matheson Professor of Cancer Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York
  For discovering the human origin recognition complex and pre-replication complex proteins responsible for orchestrating DNA replication, and for further elucidating the mechanisms by which DNA and chromatin are effectively replicated, defining how genetic material is transferred, and how aberrations in replication may contribute to cancer.
• Zena Werb, PhD, Professor, Department of Anatomy; Associate Director for Basic Science, University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco
  For her seminal contributions to the understanding of cellular microenvironments, inflammation, and intercellular communications in breast development and carcinogenesis, and for discovering MMP3 and MMP12 and the central processes by which these matrix metalloproteinases induce extracellular matrix remodeling and proteolysis.
• Eric F. Wieschaus, PhD, Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
  For his Nobel Prize winning identification of genes responsible for controlling embryonic development and their impact on tumorigenesis, and for conducting large-scale mutagenesis screens in Drosophila melanogaster to identify genes responsible for embryonic patterning and development.

The AACR will formally induct its 2019 class of elected Fellows of the AACR Academy at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019, to be held in Atlanta, March 29-April 3.