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In June, Lori L. Pierce, MD, began a 1-year term as president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, succeeding Howard “Skip” Burris III, MD. Pierce is a professor of radiation oncology and vice provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Her research focuses on improving treatment for breast cancer with radiotherapy and radiosensitizing agents. She also studies how women with BRCA1/2-positive breast cancer fare when treated with radiotherapy.

George D. Demetri, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, received the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award at the ASCO virtual meeting for his contributions to translational research in cancer. Demetri, who is also senior vice president for experimental therapeutics and director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, studies targeted therapies for sarcomas. His research led to the approval of imatinib mesylate (Gleevec; Novartis) for the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Also at the ASCO meeting, Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science and the Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology, both at Dana-Farber, received the Science of Oncology Award for his contributions to basic cancer research. Jänne studies genomic alterations in lung cancer. He has been involved in the preclinical and clinical development of therapies that target ALK, EGFR, and MET, among others.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/CDNews.