Awards & Honors

Susan J. Baserga, MD, PhD, MPhil and Emily Ai-hua Wang, MD, MAS, have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Tara Sanft, MD, presented in a panel at the Cancer Survivorship Summit, a special event hosted by U.S. Representative from Florida and breast cancer survivor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Dr. Sanft joined First Lady, Dr. Jill Biden, who was the Keynote Speaker, as well as Katie Couric and Martina Navratilova as one of many notable guest speakers at the Summit.

Amer Zeidan, MBBS, co-chaired the first meeting of the Society of Hematologic Oncology-Middle East and North Africa Chapter (SOHO_MENA) held at the Lebanese National Library in Beirut, Lebanon September 28-29 and gave two talks about AML and MDS. Dr. Zeidan also co-chaired the second meeting of Controversies in MDS AND AML (COMydAL) of the International Academy for Clinical Hematology (IACH) in Paris, France last week and also presented on MDS and AML.

Qin Yan, PhD, will receive the Outstanding Investigator Award from the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) at its upcoming joint meeting in Salt Lake City with the American Society for Matrix Biology and The Histochemical Society.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Scientific Advisory Board and its Board of Directors recently announced its 2023 commitment to fund breast cancer research in 2023-2024, including eight grants at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital. Currently receiving funding through the BCRF are Kim Blenman, PhD, MS, Mehra Golshan, MD, MBA, Melinda Irwin, PhD, MPH, Adriana Kahn, MD, Ian Krop, MD, PhD, Lajos Pusztai, MD, David Rimm, MD, PhD, and Eric Winer, MD, to support their research.

Sarah Schellhorn, MD, Appointed Regional Service Line Medical Director for Central Shoreline Region

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) grant has been awarded to a team at Yale School of Medicine. The nearly $25 million award, titled “Curing the Uncurable via RNA Encoded Immunogene Tuning,” aims to train the immune system to better fight cancer and other diseases by educating specific immune cells with mRNA technology. Richard Edelson, MD, is a co-principal investigator on the project.

Patricia LoRusso, DO, received the Association of American Cancer Institute’s (AACI) 2023 Distinguished Scientist Award.

Susan Gueble, MD, PhD, is the recipient of a High-Risk, High-Reward National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Early Independence Award.

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, has been named one of eight Fierce Pharma’s 50 Breakthrough honorees for his contributions to immune checkpoints.

Kiran Turaga, MD, MPH, recently presented at the New England Surgical Society on “Utility of Circulating Tumor DNA Assessments in Characterizing Recurrence Sites After Optimal Resection for Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Haris Mirza, MBBS, PhD, has been awarded a Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

Congratulations to the recent Yale Cancer Center recipients of SPORE Awards: 2023 Yale Head and Neck Cancer Developmental Research Awardees: He Wang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology and Curtis Pickering, PhD, Associate Professor of Surgery 2023 Yale Head and Neck Cancer Career Enhancement Awardees: Thuy Tran, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Michael Chiorazzi, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) 2023 Yale SPORE in Lung Cancer Developmental Research Awardees: Mandar Muzumdar, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology), and Siyuan Wang, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics and Cell Biology and Andrew Xiao, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics; Ya Ha, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacology; Lisa Fucito, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry; Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Therapeutic Radiology 2023 Yale SPORE in Lung Cancer Career Enhancement Awardees: Jiyeon Kim, PhD, Assistant Professor of Urology and Cellular & Molecular Physiology; Mark Lee, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Lab Medicine and Pathology; Arnaud Augert, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology; Bluma Lesch, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics

Scott Huntington, MD, MPH, MSc has been appointed Interim Chief Quality Officer for Smilow Cancer Hospital

Michael Hurwitz, MD, PhD, has been appointed Assistant Director of Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) for Yale Cancer Center. CRTEC, chaired by Harriet Kluger, MD, and co-led by Dr. Hurwitz and David Stern, PhD, is focused on bolstering and coordinating the training activities across the spectrum of disciplines.

Kiran Turaga, MD, MPH, has been awarded a CA CURE Grant from the GI Research Foundation to support his research into the “Development of 5hmc Based Plasma Signatures (Liquid Biopsy) in the Detection of Patients with Peritoneal Metastases.”

Mandar Muzumdar, MD, has received funding for a Research Project R01 Grant from the NIH to support his research on “Dietary fatty acids drive pancreatic cancer development.”

Andrew Goodman, PhD, has been appointed Chair of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis.

Shuangge (Steven) Ma, PhD, has been appointed Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health.

Ronan Talty, MD-PhD Candidate in the laboratory of Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, received the 2023 ASA La Roche-Posay Medical Student Grant Targeting Melanoma and Skin Cancer by The American Skin Association in recognition of his project, “Targeting Lipid Droplet Synthesis to Augment Melanoma Immunotherapy Responses.”

Anish Sharda, MD, MPH, is the 2023 recipient of the JH Milstone Grant. The JH Milstone Fund was established to support early-stage investigators with innovative research that improves the understanding of bleeding, thrombosis, or thrombolysis in memory of JH Milstone, MD, by his son, Leonard M. Milstone, MD ’70, Professor Emeritus of Dermatology, and daughter-in-law, Ellen B. Milstone, MD ’69.

Jeffrey Townsend, PhD, received the 2023 Reducing Disease Risk Award from Yale School of Public Health in recognition of his publication, “Attribution of Cancer Origins to Endogenous, Exogenous, and Preventable Mutational Processes.”

Caroline Johnson, PhD, was awarded the 2023 Women in Science (WomiX) Mentorship Award from the Metabolomics Association of North America at their annual conference in June.

Priya Jamidar, FACG, FASGE, MBChB, was recently presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Connecticut Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (CAPI) at their 32nd annual meeting.

Nadine Housri, MD, has received the Healio Disruptive Innovator Award in Clinical Innovation.

Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, MSc, PhD, was named to the 2023 class of the Pew- Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research.

Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, has been named Co-Chair of the ASCO Survivorship Guideline Advisory Group, which formulates the guidelines on survivorship care on behalf of ASCO.

Sabrina Browning, MD, has been invited to participate on the Steering Committee for the Amyloidosis Research Consortium to address best practices, referral networks, and coordinated care models for patients.

Yale Ventures announced the recipients of the 2023 Blavatnik Awards, including six Yale Cancer Center members for cancer-related research: Anton Bennett, PhD; Michael Girardi, MD; Peter Glazer, MD, PhD; Ruslan Medzhitov, PhD; David Spiegel, MD, PhD

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, participated in a panel discussion during the Yale Innovation Summit hosted by Yale Ventures on the Hottest New Ideas in Oncology: Translating Science to Treatments for Patients.

Veda Giri, MD, hosted a national Roundtable Conference on Engaging Black Men in Prostate Cancer Genetic Testing with the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center.

Stavroula Hatzios, PhD, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and of Chemistry and a member of Yale Cancer Center’s Cancer Immunology Research Program, has received a 2023 American Chemical Society Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. Barbara A. Ward, MD, has been named an Associate Professor of Surgery (Surgical Oncology) at Yale School of Medicine

Connecticut Magazine recognized 81 physicians from Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center, with its annual “Top Doctors” issue.

Mathieu Bakhoum, MD, PhD, has been awarded a Department of Defense (DoD) Grant to study the molecular mechanism underlying uveal melanoma progression.

The National Academy of Sciences announced the election of 120 members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research, including Anna Maria Pyle, PhD.

Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, has been selected to receive the 2023 Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for Medical Research, one of the most prestigious honors of its kind.

Christina Holt, MSN, APRN (BC), ACHPN, OCN, has been recognized by The Hastings Center and The Cunniff-Dixon Foundation for Outstanding End-of-Life Care.

Lieping Chen, MD, presented the George Adrouny Memorial Lecture at Tulane University on The Coming Era of Tumor-Site Focused Immunotherapy.

Rachel Perry, PhD, has received the Endocrinology and Metabolism Section New Investigator Award from the American Physiological Society.

Inaugural Cancer Disparities Research Awards: Michaela Dinan, PhD: Socioeconomic Disparities in the Etiology of Advanced Breast Cancer; Brinda Emu, MD, and Jessica Lewis, PhD, LMFT: Cancer Outcome Disparities among Patients with HIV and Cancer: Integrated Approach to Address Social Determinants of Health; Leah Ferrucci, PhD, MPH, and Bubu Banini, MD, PhD: Reducing Disparities in Liver Cancer Outcomes in Connecticut; Veda Giri, MD, PhD, and Nancy Borstelmann, PhD, MPH, LICSW: PROgram to address psychosocial Support, clinical outcomes, and genomic insights for Patients with EaRly-onset cancers – The PROSPER Study; Henry Park, MD, MPH: Disparities in Stereotactic Radiosurgery Access for Brain Metastases from Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and Breast Cancer

Jessica Stempel, MD, FACP, Clinical Fellow, has been selected by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) for the Minority Hematology Fellow Award Program - MD/DO Fellow -2023 to support her proposal, "Use of metformin and outcomes in older patients with classical myeloproliferative neoplasms."

Eric Winer, MD, is the recipient of the Peter I. Pressman Award from the New York Metropolitan Breast Cancer Group.

The Lung Cancer Research Foundation (LCRF) has selected Katerina Politi, PhD, as an honoree for their annual Evening of Innovation gala.

Jorge Galán, PhD, DVM, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Cece Calhoun, MD, has been invited to serve as faculty for this year’s American Society of Hematology Clinical Research Training Institute in Latin America in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD (h), has been elected to the 2023 Class of Fellows of the AACR Academy by the American Association for Cancer Research. Dr. LoRusso, while also being recently elected to serve as AACR President-Elect, will become one of 23 Fellows, and was recognized “for unrivaled clinical cancer research contributions including expertly and extensively designing and executing innovative early-phase clinical trials; and for improving therapeutic outcomes to not only reduce mortality rates, but also enhance the quality of life for patients with cancer.”

Jacquelyne Gaddy, MD, MSc, has received a Spring 2023 ECOG-ACRIN Minority Scholarship Travel Award from the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group to attend the ECOG-ACRIN Semi-Annual Group May 3-5 in Chicago.

Francesca Montanari, MD, has been selected to attend the 2023 Early Career Women Faculty Leadership Development Seminar hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges in Boston this July.

Craig Crews, PhD, was honored on April 4 with an Ivy Award, part of New Haven's annual Elm-Ivy Awards presentation.

Michaela Dinan, PhD, has been named Associate Editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).

Jill Lacy, MD, has been appointed Editor-in Chief of ASCO-SEP, the medical oncology self-evaluation program.

Luisa F. Escobar-Hoyos, PhD, and Mandar Muzumdar, MD, have both received Stage 2 continuation support for Innovator Awards from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation to fund their projects.

Pat LoRusso, DO, is a Nominee for AACR President

Sanjay Aneja, MD, PhD, has been appointed Assistant Cancer Center Director for Bioinformatics

Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, has been named Associate Cancer Center Director for Clinical Initiatives

Nita Ahuja, MD, has been named an Associate Cancer Center Director for Surgical Services

Faye Rogers, PhD, has been appointed Associate Director for DEI.

Patrick Kenney, MD, has been appointed Oncology Service Line Medical Director for Greenwich.

Aarti Bhatia, MD, MPH, has been named Leader of the Head & Neck Disease-Aligned Research Team (DART) for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital.

Melissa Young, MD, PhD, has been appointed Medical Director of the Smilow Cancer Hospital Radiation Oncology Program in New Haven.

Laura Baum, MD, MPH, has published a book chapter titled "Pain and Palliative Care" in Holland-Frei Cancer Medicine, along with Cardinale Smith, MD, PhD.

Mathieu Bakhoum, MD, PhD, has received a grant from the Connecticut Lions Eye Research Foundation (CLERF).

Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD, has been named the 2022 BioCT Entrepreneur of the Year.

Steven H. Kleinstein, PhD, has been appointed Anthony N. Brady Professor of Pathology.

Rong Fan, PhD, has been appointed the Harold D. Hodgkinson Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University.

Barbara Burtness, MD, has been named Chief Translational Research Officer for Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital and Associate Cancer Center Director for Translational Research for Yale Cancer Center.

Bruce McGibbon, MD, is the recipient of the 2022 Norm Roth Leadership Award from Greenwich Hospital.

The Lustgarten Foundation announced Mandar Muzumdar, MD, as the recipient of a 2022 Innovation and Collaboration Program Grant. The funding will support his study titled “Dietary oleic acid reprograms pancreatic lipid metabolism to drive cancer development.”

Michael Cecchini, MD, was appointed to the Colon Task Force of the NCI Gastrointestinal Steering Committee for a two-year term as an early career investigator.

Tara Sanft, MD, has been accepted into the Faculty-in-Training program (FIT) at the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH).

The American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) recently announced funding of Discovery Grants to Henk De Feyter, PhD, and Jacky Yeung, MD.

Jessica M. Stempel, MD, a second-year fellow in the Yale Medical Oncology-Hematology Fellowship Program, has received the Patterson Trust Mentored Research Award

Paul Stockhammer, MD, PhD, a third-year internal medicine resident at the Yale School of Medicine, and a research member of the Politi Lab, received the Distinguished Young Investigator Research Award at this year’s EGFR Resisters Research Summit.

Giulia Biancon, PhD, has been awarded the 2022 Italian Scientists & Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) Young Investigator Paola Campese Award.

Yale Faculty Innovation Awards:

• Demetrios Braddock, MD, PhD: Petragen
• Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD and Seth Herzon, PhD: Modifi
• Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD: Alphina Therapeutics
• Sidi Chen, PhD: Cellinfinity Bio
• Craig Crews, PhD: Siduma Therapeutics
• Farren Isaacs, PhD: Pearl Bio
• Akiko Iwasaki, PhD and Anna Marie Pyle, PhD: RIGGImmune
• Aaron Ring, MD, PhD: Seranova Bio

Peter Glazer, MD, PhD, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Suzanne Evans, MD, MPH, has been elected a Fellow of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (FASTRO).

Antonio Omuro, MD, has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (FAAN).

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, was honored by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health in Chicago last night at a commemorative dinner during SWOG’s fall meeting in celebration of his 10 years of leadership and commitment to the Lung-MAP Trial.

George Goshua, MD, MSc, has been invited to serve as a voting member of the Independent Appraisal Committee for the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, the leading Health Technology Assessment Agency in the U.S.

Hyundai Hope on Wheels presented Juan Vasquez, MD, with a $300,000 Scholar Hope Grant.

Thiruvengadam Muniraj, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine (Digestive Diseases), has become associate editor of the journal Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the official publication of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, MSc, PhD was awarded a New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health through the High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program.

Mehra Golshan, MD, MBA, has been named Chair of the Education Committee for the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC).

Barbara Burtness, MD, has been named to the Scientific Advisory Board for the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund.

Edward Perry, Jr., MD, has received a $5000 grant from the department of medicine to support his project, “Development and Implementation of a Novel Opioid Pain Management Curriculum for Oncology Fellows.”

2022 Head and Neck SPORE Developmental Research Awardees: Megan King, PhD, and Patrick Lusk, PhD: Nuclear integrity as a novel modulator of the radiation response in head and neck cancer. Jong Woo Lee, PhD: Autophagy inhibition to potentiate AURKA inhibitor therapy in head and neck cancer. 2022 Head and Neck Career Enhancement Awardees: Michael Chiorazzi, MD, PhD: Investigation of the HNSCC Tumor Microenvironment and Response to Therapy with Autologous Humanized Mice (Mentor: Richard Flavell, PhD, FRS) and He (Peter) Wang, MD, PhD: Electronic cigarette exposure on oral mucosa carcinogenesis (Mentors: Barbara Burtness, MD, Qin Yan, PhD)

Evan Morris, PhD, is one of four university leaders from across the country who have received an Academy Engagement Network antisemitism education grant. This grant will help educate the next generation of leaders about contemporary antisemitism while fostering a positive campus climate for the community.

David Schatz, PhD, is a co-winner of the 2023 Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize.

Elena Ratner, MD, has been appointed as the inaugural Director of Women’s Health System Development for the Yale New Haven Health System and Vice Chair for Gynecology in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

Pamela Kunz, MD, has been named President of The North American Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (NANETS).

David Braun, MD, PhD, and Nazli Dizman, MD, have both received Trailblazer Awards from the Kidney Cancer Association. Dr. Braun’s project is titled, “Dissecting the immunobiology of chromophobe renal cell carcinoma using single-cell transcriptomics” and Dr. Dizman will research the “Impact of CBM588 on metabolomic profile in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).”

Smita Krishnaswamy, PhD, has received the Excellence in Science Early-Career Investigator Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). The award recognizes the impact Dr. Krishnaswamy’s research, teaching, and community efforts have made in the scientific community.

Cathy Garcia, a graduate student in the laboratory of Mandar Muzumdar, MD, is the recipient of a F-31 Diversity Fellowship Award from the National Cancer Institute. Cathy will use the funding to continue her research into, “Elucidating mechanisms of endocrine-exocrine signaling in obesity-driven pancreatic cancer.”

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Scientific Advisory Board and Board of Directors recently announced BCRF’s 2022 research grants. Six grants at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital were awarded to Mehra Golshan, MD, MBA; Melinda Irwin, PhD, MPH; Ian Krop, MD, PhD; Lajos Pusztai, MD; David Rimm, MD, PhD; and Eric Winer, MD.

Mariya Rozenblit, MD, is the recipient of the 2022 SITC-Natera ctDNA in Immunotherapy Response Monitoring Fellowship and Technology Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. Dr. Rozenblit will use the funding to support her research project on “The tumor microenvironment of triple negative breast cancers with detectable circulating tumor DNA after pembrolizumab treatment.”

Rachel Greenup, MD, MPH, has received an R01 from the National Cancer Institute, along with Shoshana Rosenberg, ScD, MPH, at Weill Cornell Medicine, to support their project, "Effectiveness and implementation of a decision support tool to improve surgical decision making in young women with breast cancer.”

James Clune, MD, has been appointed to the VA National Plastic Surgery Advisory Board.

Murat Gunel, MD, recently received the prestigious Ralph G. Dacey Medal for Outstanding Cerebrovascular Research at the recent Joint Cerebrovascular Section meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

The National Accreditation Program for Rectal Cancer (NAPRC) has named Dhanpat Jain, MD, to represent the College of American Pathologists on the NAPRC’s Quality Assurance Committee.

Hamita Sachar, MD, has been recognized as a rising leader nationally by the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, which recently selected her for its GI Organization Leadership Development (GOLD) Program.

The American College of Surgeons Foundation has awarded Elizabeth Berger, MD, MS, a Health Policy Scholarship and Holly Blackburn, MD, a Resident Research Scholarship.

Kathleen Suozzi, MD, has received a Rising Star Award from the Association of Academic Cosmetic Dermatologists. The award recognizes early and mid-career faculty who consistently demonstrate commitment to advancing academic cosmetic dermatology, teaching cosmetic dermatology to trainees, and providing exceptional patient care.

Xiaolei Su, PhD, received an award from the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation for Cancer Research. This award supports a three-year project on designing new chimeric antigen receptors with improved anti-tumor efficacy. Dr. Su's group focuses on understanding immune receptor signaling and leveraging that knowledge to develop novel strategies for cancer immunotherapy.

Elizabeth Prsic, MD, has been selected to participate in the Emerging Leaders Program at Yale, a joint initiative between Yale School of Medicine and Yale New Haven Health.

Harriet Kluger, MD has been appointed Cushing Professor and Vice Chair of Internal Medicine.

The Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers (CGIC) at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center, led by Pamela Kunz, MD, and Mandar Deepak Muzumdar, MD, has selected three Yale Cancer Center teams for funding through its inaugural 2022-2023 CGIC Seed Grant Program: John Kunstman, MD, MHS, FACS, Jason Sheltzer, PhD, and Jeffrey Townsend, PhD: Combining Phylogenetic Mapping and Aneuploidy Analysis to Define Neuroendocrine Tumor Metastatic Progression, Anne Mongiu, MD, PhD, Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, and Michael Cecchini, MD: Novel Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Oxaliplatin-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy and Low Anterior Resection Syndrome, and Rosa Munoz Xicola, PhD, and Andrew Thomas DeWan, PhD, MPH: Genetic Drivers of Early Onset Colorectal Cancer in African Americans.

Gavitt Woodard, MD, is the recipient of a 2022 Young Investigator Grant from the International Lung Cancer Foundation to study gene expression and T-cell dysfunction in enlarging semi-solid lung adenocarcinomas.

Aileen Fernandez, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of David Rimm, MD, PhD, is one of 10 recipients of the 2022 Dr. Eddie Méndez Award.

Cece Calhoun, MD, MPHS, MBA, Appointed Director of the Sickle Cell Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital

The Center for Community Engagement and Health Equity, directed by Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS, has selected three Yale Cancer Center investigators to be funded to take part in the year-long “Foundations of Community-Engaged Research” course offered through the National Clinician Scholars Program. Congratulations to Jacquelyne Gaddy, MD, MSc, Anup Sharma, PhD, and Sandra Zaeh, MD MS.

Haifan Lin, PhD, has been named President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

Dhanpat Jain, MD, has been named to the Cancer Committee of the College of American Pathologists (CAP).

Craig M. Crews, PhD, has received the 2022 Connecticut Medal of Technology from the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Lynn T. Tanoue, MD, MBA, has received the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Thoracic Oncology Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her mentorship, devoted career in thoracic oncology and lung cancer screening and diagnosis, and dedication to the ATS.

Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, has received a Leveraged Finance Fights Melanoma – Melanoma Research Alliance Team Science Award to support his research, Targeting Epigenetics to Enhance Anti-Melanoma Immunity.

Claudio R. Alarcón PhD, received a Young Investigator Award from the Melanoma Research Alliance to support his project, New genetic tools to understand the role of m6A in melanomagenesis.

Ehud Mendel, MD, MBA, co-chaired the Seattle Science Foundation 12th Annual Multimodal Treatment of Spinal Tumors Conference and presented the highly coveted Beks Lecture as part of the Annual Congress of the Dutch Society of Neurosurgery.

Michael Leapman, MD, received the John N. Forrest Jr. Prize for Mentorship in Student Research.

Dr. Roy S. Herbst was this year’s inductee for Giant of Cancer Care in Lung Cancer.

The American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) has announced it will honor Qin Yan, PhD with its 2023 Outstanding Investigator Award.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, has been appointed Chair of the American Association for Cancer Research Scientific Policy and Government Affairs Committee.

The American Association for Cancer Research recently announced awards to support three young scientists from Yale Cancer Center to attend the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research earlier this week. Fernando de Miguel, PhD, Meaghan McGeary, a PhD candidate in the Bosenberg Lab, and Matt Murray, a PhD candidate in the Bindra Lab all received travel awards.

Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, has joined the Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer in Young Women of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Rachel Perry, PhD, and Adebowale Adeniran, MD, and Andrew Wang, MD/PhD, AB, co-investigators, have received an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to research whether a liver-derived hormone affects renal cell carcinoma, the most common form of kidney cancer.

Leah Tenenbaum has recently achieved certification as a Palliative Care and Hospice Advanced Certified Chaplain by the Board of Chaplaincy Certification (BCCI).

Dhanpat Jain, MD, has been named President of the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society (HPHS).

Patricia LoRusso, DO, has been awarded the 2022 Joseph H. Burchenal Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Cancer Research by the American Association for Cancer Research.

Craig Crews, PhD, received the 2022 Irving Weinstein Foundation Distinguished Lectureship Award from the American Association for Cancer Research.

Ian Krop, MD, PhD, shared Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital's appreciation for the leadership Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, and Alyssa Gateman, MPH, CCRP, brought to the Clinical Trials Office throughout 2021.

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has presented two awards to further diversity, equity, and inclusion in cancer research to the Escobar-Hoyos Lab, under the direction of Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, MSc, PhD, Dr. Escobar-Hoyos is the 2022 recipient of an AACR Career Development Award. A postdoctoral associate in the Escobar-Hoyos laboratory, Natasha Pinto Medici, PhD, is the recipient of a 2022 AACR Career Development Award to further diversity, equity, and inclusion in cancer research.

Kim Blenman, PhD, MS, has been selected for a 2022 Joint Breast Cancer Research Foundation-American Association for Cancer Research (BCRF-AACR) Career Development Award to advance her research in “Characterization of pre-existing autoantibodies in breast cancer.”

Niketa Shah, MD, presented her research on the “Impact of Including Abatacept for Graft-Versus-Host Disease Prophylaxis in Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation for Hemoglobinopathy” at the 48th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation earlier this month.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network is hosting their annual conference, including several presentations from Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital including, Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, Meena S. Moran, MD, Sarah Schellhorn Mougalian, MD, and Tara Sanft, MD.

Kim Blenman, PhD, MS, was recently appointed as a co-director of MORE.

Rachel Perry, PhD, has received an R01 from the National Cancer Institute with a conversation to a seven-year R37 to study, “Defining the Role of Renal Gluconeogenesis in Renal Cell Carcinoma.” Adebowale Adeniran, MD, Professor of Pathology and Director of Cytopathology, is co-investigator on the grant.

Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD, will serve as the The National Brain Tumor Society DNA Damage Response consortium’s principal investigator.

Chrystal Starbird, PhD, postdoctoral associate at the Yale Cancer Biology Institute, has received a Postdoctoral Career Transition Award under the Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) program, part of the National Institutes of Health's effort to enhance diversity within the academic biomedical research workforce.

Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, will present at the 31st Annual Interdisciplinary Breast Center Conference.

Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, has been appointed Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology.

8 newly elected members into the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE): Anton M. Bennett, PhD, Susan Busch, PhD, Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, Amy Justice, MD, PhD, Valentino Greco, PhD, Brian Smith, MD, Marcella NunezSmith, MD, MHS, and Yajaira Suarez, PhD.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Appointed Deputy Director for Clinical Affairs and Assistant Dean for Translational Research

Annual Award Winners Celebrated at Virtual Conclave:

Richard Edelson, MD, was presented with the Yale Cancer Center Lifetime Achievement Award

Yale Cancer Center Awards for Excellence in Clinical Care were presented to Nikolai Podoltsev, MD, PhD, and Jennifer Moliterno, MD, FAANS

The Ruth McCorkle Oncology Advanced Practice Provider Award was presented to Carol Staugaard, APRN-BC

Faye Rogers, PhD, was awarded the Yale Cancer Center Award for Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Yale Cancer Center Award for Mentorship Excellence was presented to Alfred Lee, MD, PhD

Class of 1961 Cancer Research Awards were presented to Rong Fan, PhD, and Shangqin Guo, PhD

Yale Cancer Center Population Science Research Prize was presented to Elizabeth Claus, PhD, MD

Yale Cancer Center Translational Science Research Prize was presented to Faye Rogers, PhD

The Yale Cancer Center Clinical Science Research Prize was awarded to Lajos Pusztai, MD

The Yale Cancer Center Basic Science Research Prizes were presented to Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, and Qin Yan, PhD

Four Yale Cancer Center faculty have been appointed to endowed professorships by the Yale University Corporation this month. Congratulations to Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD, Stephanie Halene, MD, PhD, Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, PhD, and David Rimm, MD, PhD.

Edward Kaftan, PhD, has been appointed Associate Cancer Center Director for Research Affairs

The inaugural awardees of the JH Milstone Fund are Matthew McConnell, MD, and Sean Gu, MD/PhD.

John Wysolmerski, MD, has been appointed Section Chief for Endocrinology & Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Rachel Greenup, MD, MPH, has received a 2021 National Endowment for Plastic Surgery Grant from the Plastic Surgery Foundation to fund her research on shared decision making for breast reconstruction.

Suzanne B. Evans, MD, MPH, has been promoted to Professor of Therapeutic Radiology.

Noffar Bar, MD, and Kelsey Martin, MD, have been selected to participate in the 2021-22 Medical Education Fellowship at Yale School of Medicine.

Jun Deng, PhD, will give the keynote speech on “Digital Twin Modeling of Cancer Patients” at the upcoming Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Virtual Environments for Measurement Systems and Applications.

Xavier Llor, MD, PhD, has been appointed Vice-Chair for the Colorectal Cancer Screening Guidelines Panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN).

Pamela Kunz, MD, has been appointed as the Journal of Clinical Oncology Consultant Editor for Meeting Proceedings.

The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Program, in collaboration with the American Association for Cancer Research and the National Medical Fellowships, and co-directed by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, has announced its faculty for the inaugural program: Alfred Lee, MD, PhD, and Patricia LoRusso, DO, will participate in the program, along with Eric Velazquez, MD.

Iris Isufi, MD, has been promoted to Associate Professor of Medicine (Hematology).

Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., MD, has been named to the Honorary Host Committee of the Nixon National Cancer Conference.

Joan A. Steitz, PhD, is one of two recipients of the 2021 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize, which recognizes people whose scientific achievements have led to the prevention, cure or treatment of human diseases or disorders, and/or whose research constitutes a seminal scientific finding that holds great promise of ultimately changing our understanding of or ability to treat disease.

Congratulations to Ruth Halaban, PhD, on receiving a Melanoma Research Alliance Established Investigator Award to research targeted therapy of melanoma with LZTR1 and CRKL inhibitors.

Lilian Kabeche, PhD, and Sidi Chen, PhD, have each been awarded the 2021 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research, a prestigious award from the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance.

Congratulations to Barbara Burtness, MD, on her appointment as Chair of the Task Force on Advancement for Women for the ECOG-ACRIN Oncology Research Group.

Shalin Kothari, MD, has been named to the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s Mantle Cell Lymphoma Consortium (MCLC).

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, has been appointed as a visiting professor of cancer immunotherapy by the Oxford Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

The winners of this year’s Fourth Annual Yale Cancer Center Trainee Colloquium Research Excellence Prize Awards: Camila Robles-Oteiza, PhD Candidate, Immunobiology, Mentor: Katerina Politi, PhD; Talib Dosani, MD, Clinical Fellow, Hematology/Medical Oncology, Mentor: Michal Rose, MD; Ryan Chow, MD-PhD Candidate, Genetics, Mentor: Sidi Chen, PhD; Can Cui, PhD Candidate, Immunobiology, Mentors: Nikhil Joshi, PhD, and Joseph Craft, MD

Three Yale Cancer Center members were awarded 2021 Blavatnik Awards during an award ceremony at the Yale Innovation Summit: Demetrios Braddock, MD, PhD, Joseph Contessa, MD, PhD, and Faye Rogers, PhD.

Julia Foldi, MD, Mariya Rozenblit, MD, and Janie Zhang, MD, fellows in the hematology/medical oncology fellowship program, have been accepted to the 2021 ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research Workshop

Jill Lacy, MD, and Ronald Salem, MD, FACS have been awarded Yale Medicine Distinguished Clinical Career Awards.

Nancy H. Ruddle, PhD, has been selected as the 2021 recipient of the Connecticut Medal of Science.

Congratulations to the 2021 recipients of the DeLuca Center for Innovation in Hematology Research Pilot Grants: Lai (Linda) Chan, PhD -Leveraging pathway interference for therapeutic benefit in B-cell malignancies; Francine Foss, MD and Markus Müschen, MD, PhD- Targeting SYK as a central driver of oncogenic TCR-signaling in peripheral T-cell lymphomas; Karla Neugebauer, PhD and Manoj Pillai, MBBS- Single molecule analysis of co-transcriptional RNA processing defects in Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) driven by mutations in splicing factors

Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, has received a grant from the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology to support her proposal, “PIN ALLIANCE: Power in Numbers using Harmonized GWAS and Toxicity Data.”

Anees Chagpar, MD, MBA, MPH, FACS, FRCS(C) was named a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO).

Amer Zeidan, MBBS, received a UM1 Supplement, in collaboration with Dr. Jerald Radich at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to support their proposal, “Serial monitoring of circulating cell-free tumor DNA as measured by duplex sequencing in older patients with acute myeloid leukemia who receive azacitidine+venetoclax +/- immune checkpoint blockade.”

Thomas Prebet, MD, PhD, received a UM1 Supplement to fund his research project, “Integration of single cell sequencing as a biomarker of PARP inhibitor response for IDH1 and IDH2 mutated AML and MDS.”

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, was elected to the Prestigious National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors in the scientific field.

Nikolai Podoltsev, MD, PhD, and Xiaomei Ma, PhD, have received a generous three-year award from The Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation. Other collaborators include Caroline Johnson, PhD, Andrew DeWan, PhD, MPH, and Rong Wang, PhD.

Congratulations to our colleagues presenting at Virtual ASCO. We have 6 oral presentations, 22 publications, 7 discussant sections, and 22 posters to support from Yale Cancer Center!Full List of YCC Participation.

Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, announced recipients of their research awards including two Yale awardees. Congratulations to Sanjay Aneja, MD, who received a Career Development Award, and Mariya Rozenblit, MD, who received a Young Investigator Award.

Prasanna Ananth, MD, has been selected to receive an American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Paper Award for her proposal, "What Defines High Quality End-of-Life Care for Children with Cancer? A Stakeholder-Driven Qualitative Study."

Elias Lolis, PhD, has been appointed the inaugural faculty director of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs (OPA).

Hongyu Zhao, PhD, was recently presented the Pao-Lu Hsu Prize at the 11th International Chinese Statistical Association conference in Hangzhou, China

1. Elucidating the role of the long coding RNA Pvt1 in Cancer: Nadya Dimitrova, PhD
2. Exploring Complementary Insulin-Lowering Agents as Adjuvants to Chemotherapy: Rachel Perry, PhD
3. Drug discovery with humanized bacteria identifies kinase muscle type 2 phosphorylation as potential target to treat highly aggressive metastatic breast cancer: Jesse Rinehart, PhD

Laura Morrison, MD, has been elected to the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM).

Jennifer Kapo, MD, and Melissa Weimer, DO, recently presented at the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance Use and Addiction (AMERSA) National Meeting in Boston, MA on Survivor Story: Beating Cancer and Tapering Opioids.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, presented the Waun Ki Hong Memorial Lecture at the AACR-Korean Cancer Association Joint Workshop on Precision Medicine last week on Personalized Therapy for Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: From BATTLE to Immunotherapy.

Ena Williams, Hope Serra, and Mary Ellen Kosturko

Congratulations to Hope Serra who was selected as the Ambulatory Care Associate Circle of Care Award recipient for the Yale New Haven Health System. Hope works in the Smilow Surgical Specialty Clinic at the Park Avenue Medical Center and was one of two ACAs awarded this inaugural honor at the Care Associates celebration for the Health System on Monday afternoon.

Monica Fradkin, MPH, BSN, CNML, and Lisa Shomsky, MBA, BSN, CNML, have been promoted to Smilow Regional Directors.

Daniel Boffa, MD, Professor of Surgery (Thoracic Surgery), has been appointed Chair of the Commission on Cancer (CoC) Quality Integration Committee and to the CoC Executive Committee.

Marianne Davies was awarded the 2019 APP Publishing Award, which highlights clinically practicing APP who has made significant advancements by publishing or implementing their research efforts or quality initiatives to the gain of YNHH patients or staff. Vanna Dest was honored with the 2019 Gratitude Award in recognition of her leadership of the APP Week Planning Committee as well as her contributions to the APP field and support of her colleagues.

Jill Lacy, MD, has been appointed to the Dean's Faculty Advisory Council to represent Yale Cancer Center.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, will give the Waun Ki Hong Memorial Lecture at the AACR-Korean Cancer Association Joint Workshop on Precision Medicine next week on "Personalized Therapy for Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: From BATTLE to Immunotherapy."

The following faculty in Medical Oncology and Hematology were promoted this year: Scott Gettinger, MD, Professor; Sarah Goldberg, MD, MPH, Associate Professor; Lucia Jilaveanu, MD, PhD, Associate Professor; Joseph Kim, MD, Associate Professor; Nikolai Podoltsev, MD, PhD, Associate Professor; Tara Sanft, MD, Associate Professor; Stacey Stein, MD, Associate Professor; and Amer Zeidan, MBBS, Associate Professor.

Dr. Nita Ahuja has announced the following promotions of SCH/YCC members in the Department of Surgery: Justin Blasberg, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Thoracic Surgery; Daniel Boffa, MD, Professor of Thoracic Surgery; Anees Chagpar, MD, MBA, MPH, Professor of Oncology; Sajid Khan, MD, Associate Professor of Oncology; Saral Mehra, MD, MBA, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology.

Dr. Peter Glazer announced the following appointments and promotions in Therapeutic Radiology: Joseph Contessa, MD, PhD, Professor of Therapeutic Radiology in the Traditional Track; James Yu, MD, MHS, Professor of Therapeutic Radiology in the Clinician Educator Track; Brian Wang, PhD, Professor of Therapeutic Radiology in the Clinician Educator Track, and Kimberly Johung, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Therapeutic Radiology in the Clinician Educator Track.

Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD, and Aaron Ring, MD, PhD, were awarded a $3.8 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop a new cytokine-based immunotherapy for melanoma.

Three Yale Cancer Center researchers were awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through its High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program. The awards fund highly innovative and unusually impactful biomedical or behavioral research proposed by extraordinarily creative scientists. Valentina Greco, PhD, received a NIH Director's Pioneer Award to support her project, "Defining the role of the mutational burden in healthy aging." Mandar Deepak Muzumdar, MD, and Noah Palm, PhD, each received an NIH Director's New Innovator Award.

Yale Cancer Center was highlighted by SWOG at their annual meeting last week for being one of 5 SWOG Lead Academic Partner and Member Site top accruers in 2018 to SWOG managed trials.

Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, has been awarded a Susan G. Komen Leadership Grant to support his project, "Immunological characterization of primary and metastatic breast cancer and discovery of novel therapeutic targets from genomic analysis of cancers."

Welcome Joyce Nancarrow Tull, RN, BSW, MSN, CCRP, as Director of our Clinical Trials Office (CTO) and Assistant Director for Clinical Sciences.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, has been named to the Board of Directors for the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). He will assume his four-year term at the upcoming IASLC 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer in Barcelona in September.

Congratulations to Karen Reyes-Benzi, RN, who was awarded the Yale New Haven Hospital Magnet Nurse of the Year. Karen is a nurse in the infusion suite on NP7 in our Hematology Outpatient clinic and is a 26 year Navy Veteran.

Dr. Gregory Zanieski has joined the Yale School of Medicine Department of Surgery and will care for patients with breast cancer at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London, in collaboration with the Smilow Cancer Hospital Care Center in Waterford.

Ellen F. Foxman, MD, PhD, was named a 2019 Hartwell Investigator. She will receive support for three years at $100,000 direct cost per year for research funding for a Novel Diagnostic Test to Reduce Antibiotic Overuse.

Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD, and Patricia LoRusso, DO, have received a grant from the Rising Tide Foundation for $450K to support funding for biomarkers for their phase I clinical trial testing olaparib against IDH1/2-mutant cancers. Dr. LoRusso is the lead PI of the clinical trial, and Dr. Bindra is the co-PI. The clinical trial is directly translating basic science work from the Glazer and Bindra labs to clinical research through our Phase I Clinical Trial Program.

Armand V. Russo, MD, has been appointed an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Yale Cancer Center and is now caring for patients at the Smilow Cancer Care Center in North Haven.

Peter Tattersall, PhD, has received a two year R21 grant from the National Cancer Institute for $400k in funding to pursue studies on Armed Oncolytic Parvoviral Vectors for Modulating the Tumor Microenvironment.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD and Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, participated in the 2019 China Cancer Immunotherapy Workshop on behalf of Yale Cancer Center.

The radiation oncology team, under the leadership of Dr. Christin Knowlton, received full accreditation from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Accreditation Program for Excellence (APEx®) for four years. We are the first in the New England Region to be awarded the accreditation, which covers Smilow Cancer Hospital and our sites in Hamden, Guilford, Trumbull, and Waterford. This ensures that patients who choose Smilow Cancer Hospital for radiation oncology receive care delivered with the highest safety and quality standards in the industry.

At the ASCO Annual meeting, Deborah Blythe Doroshow, MD, PhD, was awarded the Journal of Clinical Oncology Young Investigator Award from the Conquer Cancer Foundation to support her work, "Targeting DNA Damage Repair Mechanisms in IDH1/2 Mutated Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinomas and Other Solid Tumors."

Congratulations to Craig M. Crews, PhD, who was recently appointed as the John C. Malone Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.

Xiaolei Su, PhD, received a Child Health Research Grant from the Charles Hood Foundation to support his research into the Mechanism of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) Signaling.

Lynn Tanoue, MD, Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary), has been named Chair of the Assembly of Thoracic Oncology.

Noah Palm, PhD, has been named a 2019 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He will receive four years of funding to continue his research on decoding the diverse impacts of the microbiota on human health and disease.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, and Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin, PhD, participated in a briefing on Capitol Hill last week hosted by AACR to highlight the impact of e-cigarettes and nicotine on youth and young adults.

Sarah Eder Infantino, MS, RN, OCN, APSM has been promoted to Patient Services Manager of NP14. In her new role, Sarah will provide overall clinical leadership focused on enhancing positive patient/family experiences and collaborate with our physicians and multidisciplinary team to promote service excellence and quality outcomes for NP14.

At the Medical Oncology and Hematology Fellows' graduation, the David Fischer Teaching Awards were presented to Sarah Mougalian, MD for medical oncology and to Alfred Lee, MD, PhD for hematology.

Congratulations to Yale Cancer Center's COPPER team and Smilow Cancer Hospital for their selection as the Yale Medicine Delivery Network Winner at the 2019 Safety, Quality and Experience Conference hosted by Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Health. Their abstract, Evaluating the Impact of the Oncology Extended Care Clinic on Emergency Department Visit Rates, authored by Tannaz Sedghi and colleagues, was selected for the honor.

Roy Decker, MD, PhD has been named Chair of the Radiation Oncology Committee for SWOG.

Yuval Kluger, PhD, has received a Research Project Grant from the NIH to support his project, "Efficient Methods for Calibration, Clustering, Visualization and Imputation of Large scRNA-Seq Data."

The Cancer Immunology Research Program is proud to welcome Zenggang Pan, MD, PhD, to its program. Dr. Pan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology.

Tianxiang Zhang, PhD joins the Cancer Immunology Research Program. Dr. Zhang is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Immunobiology.

Nikhil Joshi, PhD, was awarded the Distinguished Young Investigator Research Award at the 5th Annual Immuno-Oncology Young Investigator's Forum for his abstract, "Engineering NINJA for Studies of Cancer Immunology."

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, gave the Society of Surgical Oncology's 2019 James Ewing Lecture on 'Immunological Principles of Anti-PD-1/PD-L1 Cancer Therapy' on Thursday, March 28. The James Ewing Lecture is the highest award of the Society, given to a physician whose work has had a major impact on surgical oncology.

Mandar Muzumdar, MD, a received the Cancer Research Early Career Award from AACR at the annual meeting last week, recognizing outstanding early career investigators who have authored peer-reviewed, original articles published in Cancer Research that have made a significant impact in one or more of the fields represented by the Journal. Dr. Muzumdar was honored for his publication, Adaptive and Reversible Resistance to Kras Inhibition in Pancreatic Cancer Cells, published in Cancer Research in 2018.

Dena Schulman-Green, PhD, is the recipient of the 2019 Suzanne Feetham Nurse Scientist Family Research Award from the Eastern Nursing Research Society.

Bluma (Bibi) Lesch, MD, PhD, has been named a 2019 Searle Scholar, an honor awarded to support the independent research of exceptional young faculty. Yale Cancer Center's Genetics, Genomics and Epigenetics Research Program is proud to welcome Jian Cao, PhD, to its program. Dr. Cao is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Pathology.

Alla Vash-Margita, MD, has been appointed to the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program. Dr. Vash-Margita is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

Jennifer M. Kapo, MD, Chief of Palliative Medicine at Smilow Cancer Hospital, has been named the Sherwin B. Nuland and Michael K. Vlock Associate Professor of Palliative Medicine.

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the induction of Rong Fan, PhD, a member of Yale Cancer Center's Signal Transduction Research Program, to its College of Fellows.

The International Cytokine & Interferon Society (ICIS) announced that the Seymour and Vivian Milstein Award has been bestowed on two world leaders in deciphering the fundamental mechanisms of innate immunity in directing cytokine driven responses. Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, and Hao Wu, PhD, will share the 2019 award. Dr. Iwasaki is the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology; Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; and Dermatology, and a member of Yale Cancer Center's Virus and Other Infection-associated Cancers Research Program.

Don Nguyen, PhD and Katerina Politi, PhD, have received a 5-year, $3,905,393 NCI grant to support, "Uncovering the Biology of Resistance to Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors in EGFR Mutant Lung Cancer Patient Derived Models."

Sanjay Aneja, MD, was co-chair of an NCI-ASTRO workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Radiation Oncology earlier this month. He presented on, "The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Clinical Radiation Oncologist."

Dr. Laura Morrison and Dr. Scott Sussman, physicians in the Smilow Cancer Hospital Palliative Care Program, were welcomed as new Fellows of the American College of Physicians earlier this month.

Yale Cancer Center's Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program is proud to welcome Ania Jastreboff, MD, PhD, to its program. Dr. Jastreboff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

Navid Hafez, MD, MPH, recently joined the Developmental Therapeutics Research Program. Dr. Hafez is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology).

Our Nursing team had a great presence at the 44th annual Oncology Nursing Society Congress earlier this month. All of the abstracts submitted by the Smilow nursing team were accepted, for a total of 7 posters and 4 podium presentations.

Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS, has been selected for Team Science Award by the Association for Clinical and Translational Science on behalf of the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network.

The Signal Transduction Research Program is proud to welcome Jesse Rinehart, PhD to its program. Dr. Rinehart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology.

Michael Cecchini, MD, has joined the Developmental Therapeutics Research Program. Dr. Cecchini is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology).

Michael Leapman, MD, has been awarded a K08 Clinical Investigator Award from the NIH to support his project, Understanding the Adoption and Impact of New Risk Assessment Technologies in Prostate Cancer Care.

Congratulations to Patricia LoRusso, DO, Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Associate Director for Experimental Therapeutics, on her candidacy for the Nominating Committee for AACR.

The North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO) will give its Earl P. Benditt Award to William Sessa, PhD, Alfred Gilman Professor of Pharmacology, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), and a member of Yale Cancer Center's Developmental Therapeutics Research Program.

The Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging received special recognition from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services for Excellence in Person and Family Engagement with appreciation for exemplary practices to transform clinical practice and improve health outcomes.

The Developmental Therapeutics Research Program is proud to welcome Antonio Omuro, MD. Dr. Omuro is Chief of Neuro-Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and leader of the Brain Tumor Disease Aligned Research Team (DART).

Dhanpat Jain, MD has been appointed to the Genetics, Genomics and Epigentics Research Program. Dr. Jain is a Professor in the Department of Pathology.

Dr. Barbara Burtness presented the results from the KEYNOTE- 048 study at ESMO in Munich last week.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation has funded three Yale Cancer Center members with grants to support their research to advance breast cancer prevention and treatment. Dr. David Rimm's research will focus on developing an assay to match the right drug for HER2-positive breast cancer to the right patient. Dr. Melinda Irwin is conducting a clinical study to examine the effect of diet and exercise on biomarkers, body composition, and quality of life for women with breast cancer, and, Dr. Lajos Pusztai is seeking strategies to improve response to immunotherapy in triple negative breast cancer.

Dr. Daniel Boffa has been named Vice Chair of the Quality Integration Committee for the Commission on Cancer.

The Connecticut Nurses' Association recently recognized the contribution Yale New Haven Hospital Adult Sickle Cell Program has made to integrate evidence based practice, lifelong learning, and patient centered quality outcomes into their practice.

Angela Khairallah, LCSW, received the Social Work Award of Excellence from Yale New Haven Hospital in recognition of the excellent care and support she provides to patients and their families in the Breast Center.

Tae Kon Kim, MD, PhD, received an ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation Career Development Award to study Overcoming Immune Resistance to PD1 Therapy in High Risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome with Modulating Myeloid Derived Suppressor Cells using an HDAC Inhibitor, Entinostat.

Aaron M. Ring, MD, PhD, joins four other scientists in the 2018 class of Pew-Stewart Scholars for Cancer Research.

Yimeng Gao, PhD, has been awarded a James Hudson Brown-Alexander B. Coxe Fellowship.

Stephanie Halene, MD, PhD, has been awarded a Department of Defense Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program Award to study Fanconi Anemia in collaboration with Drs. Gary Kupfer and Grzegorz Nalepa at Indiana University.

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, was honored by OncLive as one of 21 Giants of Cancer Care for his research and discoveries in Immuno-Oncology.

Cary Gross, MD, has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). One of the nation's oldest and most prestigious medical honor societies, ASCI supports the work of top physician-scientists whose research improves human health.

The Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering has elected 24 of the state's leading experts in science, engineering, and technology to membership in the academy, with 3 new members from Yale Cancer Center. Anthony J. Koleske; Gary M. Kupfer; and Sten H. Vermund

Joseph Contessa, MD, is the recipient of the Class of '61 Cancer Research Award.

Lieping Chen, MD, PhD has been named one of the 2017 recipients of the prestigious Warren Alpert Foundation Prize.

Suzanne Evans, MD, MPH has been named an Executive Editor for Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO).

Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD has been awarded a Yale Cancer Center Co-Pilot Award to study Exploitation of 2-HG conferred vulnerabilities in IDH1/2 mutant MDS/AML in pre-clinical PDX models, along with Stephanie Halene, MD, PhD.

Maximilian Stahl, MD has earned a Hematology Opportunities for the Next-Generation of Research Scientists (HONORS) award from the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

Maggie Zampano, RN, OCN, MSCN, was awarded the Joel Silidker Award by the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

Nadya Dimitrova, PhD has been named a Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research.

Patrys Limited has licensed from Yale University the worldwide rights to develop the novel lupus anti-DNA antibody 3E10 as a tumor-targeting agent.

The Conquer Cancer Foundation will award two fellows with Young Investigator Awards (YIA). Dr. Michael Cecchini will receive the Pfizer YIA and Dr. Brian Henick will receive the AbbVie, Inc YIA. Dr. Jill Lacy mentors Dr. Cecchini and Dr. Roy Herbst mentors. Dr. Henick.

Jeff Geschwind, MD, Chair of the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, has been appointed the inaugural President of the Society of Interventional Oncology.

Dr. Andrea Silber was awarded The CT Cancer Partnership 2016 Cancer Champion Award. The award recognizes contributions to cancer prevention and control in the state of Connecticut.

Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD will receive the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Paul A. Bunn, Jr. Scientific Award

Jennifer Kapo, MD was appointed by the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Health, Raul Pino, MD, to the state's Palliative Care Advisory Council.

Rogerio Lilenbaum, MD has been named Chair of the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) for Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT).

Lisa Fucito, PhD, along with co-investigators Lynn Tanoue, MD and Steven Bernstein, MD, has received funding for a new R01 focused on tobacco cessation for lung cancer patients, Gain-framed Messages and NRT Sampling to Promote Smoking Cessation in Lung Cancer Screening Programs.

Jun Deng, PhD, received an R01 Grant from the NIH. The title of his project is "Tracking Organ Doses for Patient Safety in Radiation Therapy."

Dr. Xiaomei Ma and Dr. Nikolai Podoltsev will begin a two-year research project entitled "Myeloproliferative neoplasms: etiology, patterns of care, and outcomes." This $269K project will begin on October 1, 2016 and is being funded through generous support from the Frederick A. DeLuca Foundation.

Susan Kaech, PhD has been named as the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine.

Abhijit Patel, PhD, received an R01 grant from the NCI to study "Circulating DNA as a Marker of Treatment Efficacy and Failure in Lung Cancer."

Shiyi Wang, MD, PhD, received an award from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).

Amy Justice, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Public Health and Section Chief of Internal Medicine at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System, has been awarded an R01 grant from the NIH to study HIV and Aging Mechanisms for Hepatocellular Cancer.

Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, has been newly named as the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB).

Carlos Oliveira, MD, Clinical Fellow in Pediatrics, has received a grant from the American Cancer Society to support his project on the "Clinical Effectiveness of Human Papillomavirus Vaccine." Linda Niccolai, PhD and Eugene Shapiro, MD are mentors on the project.

Lajos Pusztai, MD, has been named a Susan G. Komen Scholar and has also received a Leadership Grant from the organization.

Rogerio Lilenbaum, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Smilow Cancer Hospital and Professor of Medicine, has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO).

Joseph "Yossi" Schlessinger, PhD, has been named to the 2016 Class of Fellows of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Academy.

Patricia LoRusso, DO, Associate Director for Innovation and Professor of Medicine, was recently elected to the Association of American Physicians (AAP).

Harriet Kluger, MD, Professor of Medicine, has been named to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI).

Joann Sweasy, PhD, has announced the winners of Yale Cancer Center's annual Pilot and Co-Pilot Awards:

Pilot Awards: Alfred Bothwell, PhD, Ann Haberman, PhD, Beth A. Jones, PhD, MPH, Wu Liu, PhD, James. B. Yu, MD, MHS, Scott Huntington, MD, MPH, Mark Solomon, PhD

Co-Pilot Awards: Ranjit S. Bindra, MD, PhD and Co-PI: W. Mark Saltzman, PhD, Joseph Piepmeier, MD, Anita Huttner, MD, Rong Fan, PhD

Don Nguyen, PhD received a Department of Defense IDEA Award, which supports "conceptually innovative high-risk/high-reward research" (2 years, $350,000). His lab's proposal, "The Extracellular Matrix as a Companion Therapeutic Target in Metastatic Lung Cancer," will study how novel therapies can be used to modify the microenvironment of metastasis from lung cancer.

Sally Adua has been selected as the 2016/17 recipient of the George Robert Pfeiffer Fellowship. Sally is identifying the molecular and physiological mechanisms, which link drug resistance to brain metastasis in EGFR mutant lung cancers.

Aarti Bhatia, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medical Oncology in the Head and Neck Cancers Program, has been approved for grant funding by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) for her proposal "Single-Arm Phase II Trial of Dual Inhibition of EGFR with Afatinib and Cetuximab with Correlative Studies in the Second Line Treatment of Recurrent or Metastatic Squamous Cell Cancers of the Head and Neck."

Katie Politi, Assistant Professor of Pathology, is the 2017 awardee of the Ramsey Cotran Early Career Investigator Award from the American Association of Investigative Pathologists. This is a highly competitive and prestigious award recognizing outstanding young investigators for their contributions to understanding the conceptual basis of disease.

Congratulations to Yale Cancer Center's Murat Gunel, Akiko Iwasaki, and Anna Marie Pyle who have been inducted in the 2016 membership of The Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

Susan J. Baserga is the winner of this year's American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology William C. Rose Award for her valuable contributions to the field of ribosome biogenesis research and her dedication as a teacher and a mentor.

Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy (ACGT) has announced that Samuel Katz, MD, PhD has been awarded a 2016 ACGT Young Investigator Grant to support his research on the Use of RNA to Kill Blood Cancers.

Lynne Regan, PhD has been selected as an honoree in the 2016 Women of Innovation® program by the Connecticut Technology Council.

Dr. Alfred Bothwell received a grant from the Pardee Foundation to fund the Development of human lung cancer metastasis model in mice. The goal of Dr. Bothwell's research project is to establish a humanized mouse model of human lung cancer and test the hypothesis that Dkk-1 is a driver of cancer metastasis.

Dr. Cary Gross and Dr. Sarah Mougalian received a grant from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Oncology Research Program, in collaboration with Pfizer, to study Optimizing Patient Engagement in Reporting Outcomes among Women with Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Ranjit Bindra, MD, PhD received an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant ($792,000) over 4 years for his project "Pre-clinical Development of Mibefradil as a Novel Glioma Radiosensitizer."

Wu Liu, PhD received a grant from the Elsa U. Pardee Foundation for his research project "Nanoparticle-enhanced focused kV x-ray Radiotherapy: Monte Carlo dosimetry modeling."

Edward Snyder, MD was selected to receive The Richard J. Davey Lectureship Award.

The American Association of Immunologists (AAI) honored Dr. Richard Flavell and Dr. Lieping Chen. Dr. Flavell will be presented with the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award at the association's annual meeting in May. Dr. Chen will receive the AAI-Steinman Award for Human Immunology Research.
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Nicole Deziel, PhD, MHS received an American Cancer Society Mentored Research Scholar Grant entitled "Exposure to Halogenated Aromatic Compounds and Risk of Thyroid Cancer."

Francine Foss, MD received a $200,000 grant from the Spatz Foundation to support her research proposal "Chemokine Receptor Antagonists for Cutaneous T cell Lymphoma."

The Breast Cancer Alliance recently awarded two grants to members of the Breast Center. The first is to Dr. Brigid Killelea to support the Breast Center's Interdisciplinary Breast Fellowship Program for the 2016-17 year. Dr. Andrea Silber also received an education and outreach grant from the Alliance to support her outreach efforts in the community from the Breast Center. Congratulations to both Dr. Killelea and Dr. Silber for their efforts

The 2016 Small Projects to Improve Patient Care grant recipients, funded through the Closer to Free Fund, have been announced. Chosen by committee chaired by Ruth McCorkle, RN, PhD, Assistant Director for Psychosocial Oncology, the following projects have been funded:

• Jane Jeuland, Palliative Care Chaplain - Beyond Why.org: Online Social Support for Oncology Staff
• Dana Shaffer, Art Expression Coordinator - Development of an Anthology of Patient Stories written during personal story writing workshops
• Lisa Barbarotta, APRN-BC, Nurse Practitioner - IMPACT- Improving the mindset and perceptions about cancer together: An educational conference for young adults living with cancer
• Taylor Healey, BSN, RN, North Pavilion 12 - Respite Room for patients and families

Congratulations to the 2016 Lion Heart Grant recipients! The grant committee reviewed several outstanding applications and chose the following three projects for funding:

Preclinical Evaluation of Candidate Drug Combinations for Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer; David F. Stern, PhD

Targeting CaSR/GABABR1 Heterodimers to Treat Bone Metastases in Breast Cancer; John J Wysolmerski, MD

How Does Na+/I Symporter (NIS) Expression in Metastatic Breast Cancer Correlate with Histopathological, Biological and Clinical Parameters?; Nancy Carrasco, MD

Congratulations to Yale Cancer Center's 2015-16 American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant award winners:

Sidi Chen, PhD - Department of Genetics & Systems Biology Institute Investigating Functional Roles of MIR-345 in Cancer Metastasis

Nadya Dimitrova, PhD- Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology The roles of p53-regulated long non-coding RNAs in tumorigenesis

Smita Krishnaswamy, PhD- Department of Genetics Understanding and Disrupting Dynamic Rewiring in Signaling and Gene Regulatory Pathways during the Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition

Christos Hatzis, PhD- Section of Medical Oncology Exploring the dynamics of

de-differentiation in breast cancer cells

Matthew Strout, MD, PhD- Section of Hematology Therapeutic targeting of programmed DNA damage in B cell lymphoma

Congratulations to the 2015 Leslie H. Warner Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Winners:

Katherine Amato, PhD- Faculty mentors: Katie Politi and Susan Kaech “Mechanisms of response and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors in lung adenocarcinoma”

Soo Seok (Steve) Hwang, PhD- Faculty mentor: Richard Flavell “A molecular study of transcription factor Hhex mediated Treg development”

Alice Gaudin, PhD- Faculty mentor: Mark Saltzman “PEGylated Squalenoyl-Gemcitabine nanoparticles for the treatment of glioblastoma”

Lizhen Wu, PhD- Faculty mentor: Qin Yan “The regulation of alternative polyadenylation by JARID1 in breast cancer”

The Lung Cancer Research Foundation (LCRF) awarded Kurt Schalper, MD, PhD, a $75,000 grant to support Quantitative analysis of the PD-1 axis components and immune infiltrates in lung cancer: predictive role and therapeutic implications at their annual lung cancer awareness luncheon.

Congratulations to the 2015 Leslie H. Warner Postdoctoral Fellowship Award Winners:

Katherine Amato, PhD- Faculty mentors: Katie Politi and Susan Kaech “Mechanisms of response and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors in lung adenocarcinoma”

Soo Seok (Steve) Hwang, PhD- Faculty mentor: Richard Flavell “A molecular study of transcription factor Hhex mediated Treg development”

Alice Gaudin, PhD- Faculty mentor: Mark Saltzman “PEGylated Squalenoyl-Gemcitabine nanoparticles for the treatment of glioblastoma”

Lizhen Wu, PhD- Faculty mentor: Qin Yan “The regulation of alternative polyadenylation by JARID1 in breast cancer”

The Lung Cancer Research Foundation (LCRF) awarded Kurt Schalper, MD, PhD, a $75,000 grant to support Quantitative analysis of the PD-1 axis components and immune infiltrates in lung cancer: predictive role and therapeutic implications at their annual lung cancer awareness luncheon.

Congratulations to this year's presenters at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium being held December 8-12. Click here to view Yale presenters.

Dr. Murat Gunel, Nixdorff-German Professor of Neurosurgery and Professor of Genetics and of Neurobiology and Chief, Department of Neurosurgery, Yale-New Haven Hospital, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Günel's clinical expertise in neurosurgery focuses on treating complex brain aneurysms and vascular malformations, as well as brain tumors. Learn More >>

The National Cancer Institute has named Craig Crews, PhD, a recipient of its Outstanding Investigator Award. Dr. Crews, the L. B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, was one of 60 US scientists to receive the award, which brings $4.2 million over seven years to support his lab's research. Learn More >>

The International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology (ISGIO) has named Howard Hochster, MD, as president elect. Dr. Hochster, Professor of Medical Oncology; Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at Yale Cancer Center; and Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven, will serve a two-year term as president-elect followed by two years as president. Learn More >>

Dr. Henry Park was a recipient of the Resident Digital Poster Recognition Award at the ASTRO Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX last week. His poster, Higher Facility Case Volume of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy Is Associated With Improved Overall Survival in Clinical Stage I Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer, was presented during the Lung Cancer session of the meeting.

Congratulations to the 2015 ASTRO presenters. The conference this year is being held October 18-21st in San Antonio. View Yale sessions

Gary Kupfer, MD has received a $250,000 Scholar Grant from the Hyundai Hope on Wheels Program. Dr. Kupfer will use the funding to screen the Fanconi anemia pathway to identify synthetic lethality to find targets in tumors mutant in Fanconi genes. He also hopes to identify pathways to target that will result in protection of children's bone marrow who have the Fanconi anemia bone marrow failure syndrome.

Nominations for The Ruth McCorkle Oncology Advanced Practice Provider award are now being accepted.

Dr. Rogerio Lilenbaum has been appointed to the Board of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Yale Cancer Center has received a supplemental grand to our cancer center support grant to support a Community Health Educator to provide clinical trial education and disparity outreach in the New Haven community. The program will be under the direction of Andrea Silber, MD, Beth Jones, PhD, and Melinda Irwin, PhD.

Doximity.com has ranked The Radiation Oncology Residency Program #13 in the nation for reputation in its annual ranking of residency programs. Learn More >>

The David S. Fischer, MD annual award for outstanding teaching & mentoring of fellows in Medical Oncology was awarded to Michael E. Hurwitz, MD, PhD.

The David S. Fischer, MD annual award for outstanding teaching & mentoring of fellows in Hematology was awarded to Alfred Lee, MD.

The David S. Fischer, MD annual award to a faculty member of Yale Cancer Center and The Veterans Administration Connecticut Cancer Center for outstanding teaching & mentoring of fellows in Medical Oncology & Hematology was awarded to Natalia Neparidze, MD.

The Medical Oncology & Hematology Fellowship Program annual award for Outstanding Fellow in Research was awarded to Mehmet Altan, MD (Medical Oncology) and

Andrew Branagan, MD (Hematology).

The Trustees of the Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Foundation have named Valentina Greco, PhD, the 59th Mallinckrodt Scholar, through a competitive competition. Dr. Greco is a member of Yale Cancer Center's Signal Transduction Program. The funding of the grant commences October 1, 2015 and includes a stipend of $100,000 annually for four years. Women's Health Research at Yale announced their Pilot Project funding for 2015, and Yale Cancer Center's Christine J. Ko, MD, Associate Professor of Dermatology and Pathology, has been awarded a grant in collaboration with Yale Cancer Center to study skin cancer. Her research project aims to identify a biological marker to predict the growth rate and recurrence of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. Dr. Ko's research team's current target is a mutated gene they believe marks the difference between a slow-growing cancer and a more aggressive one.

The Women's Faculty Forum at Yale recently selected 20 faculty members across the university to work with journalists from The OpEd Project. Congratulations to Dr. Laura J. Morrison from the Yale Palliative Care Program and Dr. Anees Chagpar, Director of the Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital, who have been selected to participate in The Public Voices Fellowship at Yale University.

Congratulations to Joseph Contessa MD, PhD and Evan Morris, PhD, co-principal investigators on a new R01 from the National Cancer Institute, "Validation of Quantitative 11C-Erlotinib PET for Imaging EGFR-Mutant Lung Cancer." Their project will be done in collaboration with Sarah Goldberg, MD, MPH, and is the first NIH funded collaboration between Yale Cancer Center and the Yale PET Center. The 3-year grant totals over $750,000.

Dr. Andrea Silber has received a $35,000 grant from Avon Foundation for Women at AVON 39 The Walk to End Breast Cancer. The grant will provide patient navigation to medically underserved metastatic breast cancer patients to help them access care and make informed health care decisions.

Congratulations to Sarah Goldberg, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology), the recipient of this year's Charles A. Coltman, Jr., Fellowship from the SWOG/Hope Foundation. Dr. Goldberg also received the first SWOG Trial Support, or STrS, award, which will provide critical bridge funding for the S1403 lung cancer trial now in protocol development.

The Clinical Research Forum awarded its top honor to Yale Cancer Center's Dr. Roy Herbst for a paper he co-authored on immune therapy for multiple types of cancer. The top prize, The Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Achievement Award, was awarded for a team-written paper published last November in the journal Nature. Dr. Herbst was first author of the paper that reported how the presence of PD-L1, an immune-suppressing protein in non-cancerous immune cells, may predict how patients will respond to treatment. Learn More >>

Qin Yan, PhD, a member of the Cancer Genetics and Genomics Program, has been awarded another NCI R21 grant ($398,352 total) to study the roles of epigenetic mechanisms of drug resistance. The title of the project is "Identifying epigenetic changes critical for trastuzumab resistance." The project will be done in collaboration with

D rs. David Stern, Narendra Wajapeyee, Michael DiGiovanna, and David Rimm.

Nancy Carrasco, MD, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology and a member of Yale Cancer Center's Cancer Genetics and Genomics Program, has been elected into the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors bestowed upon scientists.

Dr. Roy Herbst recently was elected to the Association of American Physicians (AAP), one of North America's oldest medical honor societies. Dr. Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. nominated Dr. Herbst for membership. "Being elected to the AAP is a great honor richly deserved by Roy Herbst whose research with targeted therapy and immunotherapy of lung cancer has had a significant impact on the field of cancer treatment," Dr. DeVita said. Learn More >>

Richard Edelson, MD, the Aaron B. and Marguerite Lerner Professor of Dermatology and Chair of the department, received the 2015 Discovery Award during the annual meeting of the Dermatology Foundation on March 21 in San Francisco. The award recognizes an outstanding investigator "whose research accomplishments have greatly impacted the understanding of cutaneous biology, identified a previously unrecognized disease, or developed a revolutionary new therapy."

Read More >>

Congratulations to Richard Lifton, MD, PhD, who has been named Co-Chair of the President's Precision Medicine Initiative research network. Formed as a Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD), the team of experts will deliver a preliminary report in September 2015 that will inform efforts to accelerate the understanding of individual differences that play a role in health, with the goal of informing better prevention and treatment strategies tailored for each person.

Wendelin Nelson, Pharm D, BCOP has been recognized by the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), as the recipient of the 2015 ONS Susan Baird Excellence in Clinical Writing Award. Wendelin is being recognized as the first author for her article entitled "Development of a Policy and Procedure for Accidental Chemotherapy Overdose" that appeared in the August 2014 issue of Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing. The award will be presented to Dr. Nelson during the ONS Annual Congress April 23-26, in Orlando, FL.

Edward Snyder, MD has published Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation: A Handbook for Clinicians as an editor of the text.

Maysa Abu-Khalaf, MD, recently participated in a Breast Cancer in the Arab World 2015 conference in Amman, Jordan as a moderator and a panelist. The Jordan Breast Program under the leadership of HRH Princess Dina Mired organized the conference.

Evan Morris, PhD, a member of Yale Cancer Center's Radiobiology and Radiotherapy Program, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research and teach next winter at Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Smilow Cancer Hospital Hematology Program staff, friends, and families were recently recognized as a 1st place corporate team by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for their efforts raising over $2000 to support the Society in its annual Light the Night Walk at Lighthouse Point.

Congratulations to Yale Cancer Center members Peter Glazer, Craig Crews, and Vasilis Vasiliou, who were recently elected into the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. Election to the Academy is on the basis of scientific and engineering distinction achieved through significant contributions in scientific and engineering excellence.

Many Yale Cancer Center faculty members participated in the 15th Annual Targeted Therapies of Lung Cancer Meeting in Santa Monica, CA last week, co-chaired by Roy Herbst, MD, PhD. Sponsored by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, the invitation-only meeting gathers the top scientists to discuss the latest advances in the treatment of lung cancer with targeted therapies.

Joseph Schlessinger, PhD, the William H. Prusoff Professor of Pharmacology has been awarded the 2015 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine from the Madrid-based BBVA Foundation in recognition of his work leading to the first personalized treatments for cancer. Dr. Schlessinger shares the prize with Tony Hunter of the Salk Institute and Charles L. Sawyers, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, for "carving out the path that led to the development of a new class of successful cancer drugs." Read More >>

Pasquale Patrizio, MD, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences and Director of Fertility Preservation Program and a member of the Yale Cancer Center Developmental Therapeutics Program, has been elected President of the International Society for Fertility Preservation.

Qin Yan, PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology and a member of Yale Cancer Center's Genetics and Genomics Research Program, has been awarded R21 Grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the roles of epigenetic regulators in breast cancer metastasis. The $398,352 grant will be conducted in collaboration with Drs. Don Nguyen, Narendra Wajapeyee, and David Rimm.

The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital has received Three-Year Full Accreditation from the American College of Surgeons, National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers. NAPBC Accreditation is the seal of approval for breast centers from the American College of Surgeons and formally acknowledges their commitment to providing the highest quality evaluation and management of patients with breast disease. Learn More>>

Narendra Wajapeyee, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology and a member of the Yale Cancer Center Signal Transduction Program, has received a R21 grant from National Cancer Institute to study the role of metabolic alteration in melanoma biology and therapy. The $400,000 grant is in collaboration with investigators Gary Cline and Yuval Kluger. Dr. Wajapeyee also received a research grant award from Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer research to identify the drivers of pancreatic cancer. Xiaoyong Yang, PhD, Associate Professor of Comparative Medicine and a member of the Yale Cancer Center Signal Transduction Program, has received an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant to study the Control of Cancer Metabolism by O-Linked Glycosylation. The four-year grant totals $792,000.

Narendra Wajapeyee, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology and a member of the Yale Cancer Center Signal Transduction Program, has received a R21 grant from National Cancer Institute to study the role of metabolic alteration in melanoma biology and therapy. The $400,000 grant is in collaboration with investigators Gary Cline and Yuval Kluger. Dr. Wajapeyee also received a research grant award from Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer research to identify the drivers of pancreatic cancer.

Xiaoyong Yang, PhD, Associate Professor of Comparative Medicine and a member of the Yale Cancer Center Signal Transduction Program, has received an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant to study the Control of Cancer Metabolism by O-Linked Glycosylation. The four-year grant totals $792,000.

The National Cancer Institute has awarded Don Nguyen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology and a member of the Signal Transduction Research Program, a 5-year R01 grant ($1,724,760 total), to study the role of metabolic stress in lung cancer metastasis. This project will be performed in collaboration with Gary Cline and Qin Yan. The title of the grant is "A novel lineage pathway controls metabolic adaptation by metastatic lung cancers."

Congratulations to Abhijit Patel, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Therapeutic Radiology and a member of the Radiobiology and Radiotherapy Program. Dr. Patel has received a $200K grant from the Brozman Foundation to study "Ultrasensitive detection of tumor DNA in blood for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer."

The annual Lion Heart Grants for Breast Cancer Research were awarded to three Yale Cancer Center investigators for 2015:

Donald Engelman, PhD:Targeting Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer: Weakly-acidic prodrugs bias drug uptake toward tumors

Vikram Wali, PhD: Exploiting Metabolic Isoenzyme Shifts in Breast Cancer to Discover Novel Therapies

Vikram Wali, PhD and Chistos Hatzis, PhD: Evaluation of New Treatment Strategy for Triple Negative Breast Cancer Involving Combinations of Cancer Stem Cell Specific Drugs and Standard Chemotherapy At the Annual American Society of Hematology Conference in December, the following students received abstract achievement awards: Linette Bosques, Amalyah Figueroa, Chad Sanada, Alexandra Teixeira, Siying Zou, Shiny Nair, and Roger Kim.