Charles L. Sawyers (born 1959) is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator who holds the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). HOPP is a program created in 2006 that comprises researchers from many disciplines to bridge clinical and laboratory discoveries.[2]
Charles L. Sawyers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Charles Lazelle Sawyers[1] 1959 (age 64–65) |
| Education | Johns Hopkins University, Princeton, UCSF |
| Medical career | |
| Profession | Physician |
| Institutions | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Howard Hughes Medical Institute |
| Sub-specialties | Oncologist |
| Research | Leukemia/prostate cancer |
| Awards | Lasker Clinical Award (2009) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2014) |
| Website | The Charles Sawyers Lab |
Career
Sawyers received a BA from Princeton University in 1981 and an MD from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1985,[3] followed by an internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco.[4] He became a HHMI investigator in 2002 while working at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center.[5]
Sawyers works on molecularly targeted cancer drugs, with a focus on developing a new generation of treatment options for patients. He shared the 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award with Brian J. Druker and Nicholas Lydon,[6] for the development of the ABL kinase inhibitor imatinib for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia and the second-generation ABL inhibitor dasatinib to overcome imatinib resistance. He also co-discovered the antiandrogen drugs enzalutamide, approved by the FDA in 2012, and apalutamide[7] approved in 2019, both for treatment of advanced prostate cancer.[8]
Sawyers' cancer research is discussed in the second episode of Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies.
Significant positions
Sawyers served as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) in 2007[9] and of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in 2012.[10] He was also appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board by President Obama in 2012,[11] and has served on the Board of Directors of Novartis since 2013.[12]He was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Cancer Biology in 2017,[13] serving until 2021.[14]
Memberships
Awards
- Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award (2001)[15]
- David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award, American Society of Clinical Oncology (2005)[16]
- Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, American Association for Cancer Research (2005)[17]
- Dorothy P. Landon–AACR Prize for Translational Cancer Research (2009)[18]
- Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (2009)[19]
- Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2013)[20]
- Taubman Prize for Excellent in Translational Medical Science (2013)[21]
- Hope Funds for Cancer Research Award of Excellence for Clinical Development (2014)[22]
- BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine along with Tony Hunter and Joseph Schlessinger (2014)[23]
- The Scheele Award (2017), The Swedish Academy of Pharmaceutical Science.
References
External links
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center - Biography, Lab Description
- Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute - Biography, Lab Description
- Video:Talk by Sawyers at the NIH-Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Symposium, March 31, 2011.
- Video:Speaking to Katie Couric regarding Stand Up 2 Cancer - @KatieCouric, CBS news, September 8, 2010
- Quoted: New Drugs Stir Debate on Rules of Clinical Trials, New York Times, September 19, 2010
- Quoted: What can we learn from curable cancers? Newsweek, September 7, 2010
- Video: Speaking with Charlie Rose: A discussion about Cancer Treatments, October 1, 2009