Charles Sawyers - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Charles L. Sawyers is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...

and a physician-scientist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center is a cancer treatment and research institution founded in 1884 as the New York Cancer Hospital...

. His work in the lab builds on the success of molecularly targeted cancer drugs with a focus on developing a new generation of treatment options for patients.

Sawyers holds the Marie-Josée

Marie-Josée Drouin

Marie-Josée Kravis is an economist and philanthropist. She is from Montreal, Quebec, and is the third wife of financier Henry Kravis.-Background:...

and Henry R. Kravis Chair in Human Oncology

Oncology

Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with cancer...

and Pathogenesis

Pathogenesis

The pathogenesis of a disease is the mechanism by which the disease is caused. The term can also be used to describe the origin and development of the disease and whether it is acute, chronic or recurrent...

Program. Sawyers is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2009 Lasker Clinical Award

Lasker Award

The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1946 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, founded by advertising pioneer Albert Lasker and his wife Mary...

,. was recognized for his part in advancing treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a relatively rare disease that strikes about 5,000 people per year in the United States. He played a key role in the development of imatinib (Gleevec) and dasatinib (Sprycel), two drugs that together have transformed CML from a fatal cancer into one that is nearly always treatable. Imatinib was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2001, and dasatinib was approved in 2006.

Using his clinical understanding of treating CML as well his expertise from studying it in the laboratory, Dr. Sawyers helped design the first clinical trial for imatinib, including selecting which patients were most likely to benefit from the drug. Along with Brian J. Druker of Oregon Health and Science University and Moshe Talpaz of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Prior to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Sawyers worked at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center for nearly 18 years. He has a Bachelors Degree in history from Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

and an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

. He is married with two children and lives in New York City.

Awards

Lasker-Debakey Clinical Medical Research Award

Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award

Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, American Association for Cancer Research

David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award, American Society of Clinical Oncology

Dorothy P. Landon–AACR Prize for Translational Cancer Research

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.