President Barack Obama has awarded the National Medal of Science to 12 eminent researchers and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to 11 distinguished inventors. The National Medal of Science recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to various scientific fields. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation honors those who have made lasting contributions to America's competitiveness and helped strengthen its technological workforce.

Three of the recipients have made significant contributions to cancer research.

M. Frederick Hawthorne, PhD, and Leroy Hood, MD, PhD, received the National Medal of Science.

Hawthorne directs the International Institute of Nano and Molecular Medicine and serves as a distinguished professor of chemistry and radiology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He developed an investigational technique known as boron neutron capture therapy to kill cancer cells.

Hood, president and cofounder of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, WA, began his career at the California Institute of Technology. There, he and his colleagues developed DNA and protein sequencers and synthesizers, devices that led to the mapping of the human genome.

Robert Langer, ScD, received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A professor of chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, he has developed novel drug-delivery systems based on polymers, including materials that allow large molecules of a protein to pass through membranes to inhibit angiogenesis, as well as materials that release drugs over time.

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