The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) inducted its newly elected class of Fellows of the AACR Academy at its Annual Meeting, held April 1–5, 2017, in Washington, DC.
2017 Class of Fellows
- Sir Adrian P. Bird, PhD, Buchanan Professor of Genetics, Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh—For characterizing CpG islands and highlighting the role of DNA methylation in regulating gene expression and disease onset
- Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, Director, Department of Regulation in Infection Biology, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin; Visiting Professor, Umeå University, Sweden—For elucidating the molecular mechanisms governing clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-mediated viral immunity and for her contributions to the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system
- Riccardo Dalla-Favera, MD, Uris Professor of Clinical Medicine; Professor, Pathology and Cell Biology; Professor, Genetics and Development; Professor, Microbiology and Immunology; Director, Institute for Cancer Genetics, Columbia University—For demonstrating the significance of proto-oncogenes and select genetic abnormalities
- Nancy E. Davidson, MD, Senior Vice President, Director, and Full Member, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; President and Executive Director, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance; Head, Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, University of Washington, Seattle—For defining key molecular drivers of breast carcinogenesis and for establishing second-line therapeutic approaches for the treatment of breast cancer
- Vishva M. Dixit, MD, Vice President of Research; Staff Scientist, Department of Physiological Chemistry, Genentech—For uncovering the role of caspases and associated signaling molecules in death receptor–mediated cell death and immune responses
- Jennifer A. Doudna, PhD, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences; Professor, Departments of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley—For revealing bacterial mechanisms of viral immunity and for contributions to the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 system used to manipulate genomic DNA
- Carl H. June, MD, Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Director, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies; Director, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, UPenn School of Medicine, Abramson Cancer Center—For designing chimeric antigen receptor T-cell immunotherapy for the treatment of refractory and relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia
- Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology, University of California, San Diego—For categorizing how environmental stress, hormones, inflammation, and obesity activate key signaling pathways involved in cancer
- Michael B. Kastan, MD, PhD, Executive Director, Duke Cancer Institute; William and Jane Shingleton Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology; Professor of Pediatrics, Duke University School of Medicine—For ascertaining key steps of the DNA-damage response pathway, deciphering mechanisms of p53-mediated cell-cycle inhibition, and for defining the role of ATM in modulating mitochondrial function, insulin signaling, and cellular metabolism
- Tomas Lindahl, MD, FRS, Emeritus Scientist, Francis Crick Institute, London—For advancing the understanding of DNA-damage repair through his discovery of the process of base-excision repair and for isolating and characterizing several key components of the DNA-repair machinery
- Paul L. Modrich, PhD, James B. Duke Professor of Biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Duke University Medical Center—For clarifying the mechanisms of DNA-mismatch repair and for demonstrating its role in the onset of various cancers
- Karen H. Vousden, PhD, Professor, The Crick Institute; Chief Scientist, Cancer Research UK, London—For describing various p53 regulatory mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis. ■
