Nominations for the 2011 Award are now open.
Submission deadline: 4:00 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Thursday, September 30, 2010.
Learn more about the 2010 recipient of this Award.
View the list of all prior recipients.
The Award and Lecture
AACR and the American Cancer Society established this Award in 1992 to honor outstanding research accomplishments in the fields of cancer epidemiology, biomarkers, and prevention.
The winner of the 20th Annual AACR-American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention will receive an honorarium of $5,000, give a 50-minute lecture, and be given support for the winner and a guest to attend the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, in Orlando, FL, USA (April 2-6, 2011).
Eligibility
- Candidacy is open to all cancer researchers who are affiliated with any institution involved in cancer research, cancer medicine, or cancer-related biomedical science anywhere in the world. Such institutions include those in academia, industry, or government.
- The Award will be presented to an individual investigator.
- Institutions or organizations are not eligible for the Award.
Nomination Process
Nominations may be made online via letter from any scientist, whether an AACR member or nonmember, who is now or has been affiliated with any institution involved in cancer research, cancer medicine, or cancer-related biomedical science. Candidates may not nominate themselves.
Nominations must be submitted online at https://proposalcentral.altum.com, no later than 4:00 p.m. United States Eastern Time on Thursday, September 30, 2010. Paper nominations will not be accepted. The following materials must be submitted:
Nomination Letter, which must:
- be addressed to the Selection Committee; be written in English; and not exceed 1,000 words;
- specify the AACR Award for which the candidate is being nominated;
- a concise description of the candidate's outstanding cancer research accomplishments in the fields of epidemiology, biomarkers, and prevention, with the publications supporting these accomplishments directly referenced within the letter; and
- a concise description of the impact of these accomplishments on the field.
Candidate's CV. The candidate's curriculum vitae in English, including a complete list of the candidate's publications.
Summary Statement. A statement, no more than 50 words, summarizing the candidate's research accomplishments for which he or she is being nominated.
Preferred file formats are *.doc. The candidate's CV may be submitted as a .pdf file. Your nomination is not considered fully submitted until you receive a confirmation e-mail from the AACR; confirmations will be sent within two business days.
Nominators are asked to maintain the confidentiality of the nomination process and to refrain from informing the candidate about the nomination.
There is no restriction on the number of candidates that may be nominated by any individual scientist. There is no restriction on the number of nominators that may write nomination letters or that may sign a single nomination letter on behalf of a candidate.
Nomination Instructions
Nominations must be completed online using the proposalCENTRAL website. Full nomination instructions and program guidelines are available through the link below and on the proposalCENTRAL website.
Program Guidelines and Application Instructions 
Selection
Candidates will be considered by a Committee of international cancer leaders appointed by the President of the AACR. After careful deliberations by the Award Committee, its recommendations will be forwarded to the Executive Committee of the AACR for final consideration and decision. Selection of the Award winner will be made on the basis of the candidate's cancer research accomplishments in the fields of epidemiology, biomarkers, and prevention. No regard will be given to age, race, gender, nationality, geographic location, or religious or political views.
Supporter
Generously supported by the American Cancer Society.
Questions?
Monique P. Eversley, Program Coordinator
+1 (267) 646-0576; monique.eversley@aacr.org
American Association for Cancer Research
17th Floor, 615 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106-4404
SPOTLIGHT
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19th Annual Recipient
Michael J. Thun, M.D.
Vice President Emeritus,
Epidemiology & Surveillance Research
American Cancer Society
Atlanta, GA
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Dr. Michael J. Thun delivered his Award Lecture entitled "When science meets policy: letting the obstacles to cancer prevention shape the opportunities for epidemiologic research," at the AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010 in Washington, D.C. He received his Award from Dr. John J. Stevens (left) of the American Cancer Society and Dr. Paolo Boffetta, Selection Committee co-Chair (right). Watch the webcast of the Award lecture.
Dr. Michael J. Thun is honored for his seminal contributions to research on aspirin and cancer prevention, to etiologic and surveillance research on lung cancer in relation to the changing design of cigarettes, and to the development of a high-impact epidemiologic research program at the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Thun’s leadership over the past 20 years at the American Cancer Society (ACS) has been instrumental in developing the Epidemiologic Research Program at ACS into a world-class center for epidemiologic research on the causes and prevention of cancer. His many research accomplishments in cancer epidemiology and prevention have distinguished him as a global leader in the field.
Dr. Thun came to ACS initially as Director of Analytic Epidemiology in 1989. He had already established himself as a recognized expert on the health risks of occupational and environmental exposures. His research on cadmium exposure in relation to lung cancer and renal toxicity during the 1980s was critical in establishing a more stringent regulatory limit on occupational exposure to cadmium, reducing the allowable air concentration by a factor of 20. He began this research while serving as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer for the CDC assigned to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Dr. Thun’s seminal research on aspirin use in relation to the risk of colon cancer and other gastrointestinal malignancies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Cancer Research in 1991 and 1993, motivated a resurgence of interest in the topic of inflammation and cancer. Despite evidence from multiple experiments in rodents showing that aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) inhibited the development of chemically-induced colorectal tumors, the relevance of the animal data to humans had received essentially no attention until a case-control study by Rosenberg et al. reported lower incidence of colon cancer in people who regularly used aspirin.
These results were viewed skeptically, however, until they were replicated in the massive American Cancer Society cohort. The size and prospective design of the landmark study led by Dr. Thun plus the internal consistency of the findings inspired numerous other epidemiological studies that confirmed the results. Coinciding with this observation was the discovery of the inducible isoform of the cyclooxygenase enzyme, COX-2. The exciting confluence of the epidemiologic and biochemical findings brought renewed funding to research on inflammation and cancer and led the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to devote its first Handbook on Cancer Prevention to the topic of Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs, a volume to which Dr. Thun contributed extensively.
In the mid-1990s, Dr. Thun became intensively involved in tobacco research because of the unexpected and large increase in lung cancer risk observed among smokers using cigarettes that were presumed to be “safer” (i.e. less lethal) than earlier brands because of design changes that reduced their tar and nicotine yield as measured by machine smoking. In a series of studies, Dr. Thun first demonstrated that there were no substantial differences in the number of cigarettes smoked per day or duration of smoking that would explain the doubling of lung cancer risk among male smokers from the first large ACS cohort, covering the time period 1959-66, to a subsequent study conducted from 1982-88. Further, a review that Dr. Thun conducted with Dr. David Burns revealed that all of the studies that had examined lung cancer risk in relation to “tar” yield had compared unfiltered cigarettes used before the 1950s to filter-tip cigarettes that predominated thereafter and had not examined the relation of risk to further reductions in machine-measured tar that were achieved through design changes that diluted the smoke.
In 2004, Dr. Thun coauthored a paper with Dr. Jeffrey Harris that demonstrated lower lung cancer risk in smokers of filter-tip cigarettes compared to those who smoked unfiltered cigarettes, but no difference in lung cancer risk was associated with brands that diluted the smoke in order to achieve lower levels of machine-measured tar. As a result of this finding and other biomarker studies, the Federal Trade Commission withdrew its approval of machine-measured smoking as a valid indication of risk to smokers and the Food and Drug Administration banned use of the terms “Light” and “Mild." Because of his major research contributions on the health effects of tobacco, Dr. Thun was invited to serve on three IARC Working Groups on tobacco and tobacco cessation, most recently chairing the subgroup on active and passive smoking for Monograph 100E.
Dr. Thun received a B.A. degree from Harvard College, an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and a Master of Science in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health.
Dr. Thun currently chairs the Secretariat of the National Cancer Institute Cohort Consortium, is a founding member and chair of the Publications Committee of the Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium (BPC3), and a leader of the BMI Pooling Project.