Charles L. Sawyers, MD

Description

Charles L. Sawyers, MD, is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and is Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chair, Human Oncology & Pathology, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He served as the ​​2007-2008 ASCI President (profile here).

Dr. Sawyers studies mechanisms of cancer drug resistance with an eye toward developing novel therapies. He co-discovered the antiandrogen drug enzalutamide (approved by the FDA in 2012) for treatment of advanced prostate cancer. He shared the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for the development of the ABL kinase inhibitor imatinib for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia and the second generation ABL inhibitor dasatinib to overcome imatinib resistance.

He is recipient of the 2011 ASCI Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award, 2013 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, and 2020 Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics. Dr. Sawyers is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Sawyers co-founded the American Academy for Cancer Research Project GENIE, an international consortium of cancer centers that share genomic and clinical data from their respective patients, for which he received the 2021 AACR Distinguished Public Service Award.

This event was moderated by Goutham Narla, MD, PhD, ASCI Councilor, Chief of the Division of Genetic Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine and Associate Director, MSTP at the University of Michigan. Dr. Narla is President of The Young Scientist Foundation and a member of the American Academy for Cancer Research.