Olivier Delattre, MD, PhD, Honored with 2023 AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research

March 29, 2023

PHILADELPHIA – The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will award Olivier Delattre, MD, PhD, with the 2023 AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research during the AACR Annual Meeting 2023, April 14-19 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

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 recognized for a series of seminal genetic insights into the etiology of pediatric solid tumors that have had substantial clinical implications.

The AACR and the St. Baldrick’s Foundation established the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer in 2019 to bring attention to major pediatric cancer research discoveries and to honor individuals who have significantly contributed to any area of pediatric cancer research, resulting in the fundamental improvement of the understanding and/or treatment of pediatric cancer.

Delattre is internationally heralded for having transformed the field of pediatric cancer research by opening new avenues for pediatric cancer screening, while improving the precision of molecular diagnostics. He was the first to report the molecular characterization of the EWS-FLI1 chromosomal translocation in Ewing sarcoma, which is now central to the accurate diagnosis of that cancer. He has also been instrumental in identifying genetic alterations in other childhood cancers, including the BCOR-CCNB3 translocation in Ewing-like sarcoma and ALK mutations in neuroblastoma and other EWS-translocation-positive sarcomas. He was one of the first to demonstrate the existence of mutations within chromatin remodeling complexes in cancer, which are now known to occur in approximately 20% of human cancers. Delattre’s work has been crucial to identifying major cancer predisposition genes for neurofibromatosis type 2, neuroblastoma, and a rhabdoid tumor predisposition syndrome, generating new insights into pediatric cancer susceptibility.

Delattre has been a leader in developing genetically engineered mouse models for neuroblastoma and rhabdoid tumors. These models have been used to evaluate candidate drug targets, assess therapeutic efficacy, and investigate drug resistance mechanisms. He has explored the oncogenic plasticity of pediatric cancers, furthering our understanding of the development of pediatric solid tumors. More recently, his work has focused on the identification of tumor-specific neogenes driven by chimeric transcription factors in sarcoma, work that has the potential to establish innovative avenues for the development of new therapeutic approaches for pediatric cancer.

(PCWG) in 2013 and has served on the AACR-PCWG Steering Committee since 2020. He has served as a member of the AACR-Aflac Inc. Career Development Award for Pediatric Cancer Research Scientific Review Committee (2016-2018); member of the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research Committee (2019-2020); and member of the AACR Pediatric Cancer Research Grants Scientific Review Committee (2019-2021).

Delattre’s work has been recognized with many awards and honors, such as the Inserm Grand Prix (2022), the Jeremy Jass Prize for Research Excellence in Pathology (2019), The Fondation ARC Léopold Griffuel Award (2016), the CTOS Herman Suit Special Award Lecture (2014), the Charles Oberling Award (2009), the EUROCANCER Award (2007), the Award of the Académie Nationale de Médecine (2000), the Gaston Rousseau Award of Académie des Sciences (1996), the Olga Sain Award of Comité de Paris of the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (1995), the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale Rose Lamarca Award of Clinical Investigation (1995), the EURE Award of the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (1993), and the Jacques Sylvain Bourdin Award of Comité de l’Essonne of the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (1993).

Delattre was elected as a member of the Academia Europea (2012) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (2011).

Delattre received his medical degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University and earned his PhD in molecular biology from Paris Diderot University in France.

Delattre’s award lecture, titled “Ewing sarcoma, a paradigm for cell reprogramming in cancer,” will be held on Tuesday, April 18 at 5 p.m. ET at the Orange County Convention Center.