AACR Team Science Award

Nominations for the 2012 Award are now closed.

View the list of all prior winning teams.

The Award

Unparalleled opportunities now exist to detect, diagnose, prevent and more effectively treat cancer due to the sequencing of the human genome, progress in systems biology and the advancement of computer science and other technologies. Capitalizing on these opportunities often depends on the participation of researchers in specialties that include, but are not limited to, chemistry, physics, engineering, computational science and nanotechnology. The integration of such specialties into cancer and biomedical research form the bases of interdisciplinary scientific teams.

This award has been established by the American Association for Cancer Research and Eli Lilly and Company to acknowledge and catalyze the growing importance of interdisciplinary teams to the understanding of cancer and/or the translation of research discoveries into clinical cancer applications. Proactive interaction between academic and industry researchers is particularly crucial to continue progress and accelerate drug development.

In addition, through the presentation of this award, the AACR and Eli Lilly seek to effect change within the traditional cancer research culture by recognizing those institutions that value and foster interdisciplinary team science. These institutions will have demonstrated their support of a team science environment by creating mechanisms to enhance the required infrastructure, such as through pilot funding, technology transfer offices, shared resources, etc., and by presenting awards, honors, appointments and promotions to those who participate in interdisciplinary teams.

The AACR Team Science Award will recognize an outstanding interdisciplinary research team for its innovative and meritorious science that has advanced or likely will advance our fundamental knowledge of cancer or a team that has applied existing knowledge to advance the detection, diagnosis, prevention or treatment of cancer.

The team selected to receive the Sixth Annual AACR Team Science Award will collectively be awarded a prize of $50,000 and be recognized during the AACR 103rd Annual Meeting 2012 in Chicago, IL, USA (March 31-April 4 2012). The representative institutions will be cited at the AACR Annual Meeting for their leadership role in fostering team science.

Eligibility Criteria

For the purpose of this award, a team is comprised of independent faculty-level researchers providing complementary interdisciplinary expertise, each of whom have made separate substantive and quantifiable contributions to the research being recognized.
Team members may be working within the same institution or at several institutions; however, if researchers are in the same institution, they must have clearly separate funding and research space.
The research to be recognized should reflect work towards a specific scientific goal that otherwise would not be realized by any single component of the team.
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.
Teams comprising academic and industry researchers will be accepted.

Nomination Procedure and Instructions

Nominations are closed.

Nominations may be made by 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 (corresponding nominator). Any member of a team may serve as the corresponding nominator.

A complete nomination package must consist of the following:

the contact information of the corresponding nominator;
the full name of the team leader;
a list of all members of the team, their professional titles and affiliations, with a description of each member's substantive and quantifiable contribution to the team;
indication of the primary concentration of research area;
50-word summary statement of the research accomplishment or accomplishments for which the team is being nominated;
a narrative, of no more than 3,000 words, describing in-depth the research accomplishment or accomplishments for which the team is being nominated as well as the significance and impact of the research, with no more than twelve (12) relevant publications referenced within the narrative;
a list of the publications referenced with the research narrative, with full citations (no more than 12);
a narrative, of no more than 1,000 words, describing the value-added activities of the team and the coordination of the research across the multiple performance sites;
a descriptive list of institutional support of the team, such as pilot funding, technology transfer offices, shared resources, etc.; and
original signatures of all team members.

Biosketch for each team member with relevant references, written in English; and

Letters of endorsement from dean, department head or director of all institutions represented by the team members, confirming support for the nomination and certifying contents of nomination package, written in English.

The original signature page of the nomination form must contain the original signatures of all team members and be uploaded to https://proposalCENTRAL.altum.com. Photocopies are not acceptable.

Selection

Nominations of teams will be considered by an Award Selection Committee of international cancer leaders appointed by the president of the AACR. After careful deliberations by the Award Selection Committee, their recommendations will be forwarded to the Executive Committee of the AACR for final consideration and decision. Selection of the Team Science Award winners will be made on the basis of the criteria listed above. No regard will be given to age, race, gender, nationality, geographic location or religious or political views.

Questions?

Linda Brooks-Stokes, Program Associate
awards@aacr.org

American Association for Cancer Research
17th Floor, 615 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106-4404

SPOTLIGHT

2011 Award Recipients

Seattle HPV Research Team

Team members in attendance received their awards at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011 in Orlando, FL. The Awards were presented during the opening ceremony by Dr. Jonathan M. Yingling, of Eli Lilly and Company and Dr. Joe W. Gray, Selection Committee Chairperson.

Watch webcast of the 2011 award presentation.

Seattle HPV Research Team

Janet R. Daling, Ph.D.; Denise A. Galloway, Ph.D.; James Hughes, Ph.D.; Nancy Kiviat, M.D.; Laura Koutsky, Ph.D.; Margaret M. Madeleine, Ph.D.; Constance Mao, M.D.; Barbara McKnight, Ph.D.; Peggy L. Porter, M.D.; Steve Schwartz, Ph.D.; Hisham K. Tamimi, M.D.; Longfu Xi, Ph.D.

The Seattle HPV team's work exemplifies how cancer research can dramatically impact public health. The researchers' long-term collaborations in basic science, epidemiology and clinical research played a vital role in increasing our understanding of HPV and developing the HPV vaccine, which has the potential to prevent more than half a million HPV-associated cancers each year, worldwide.

By combining molecular assays to detect and characterize HPV infections with epidemiologic approaches, the 12-member team, led by Denise Galloway, Ph.D., head of the Cancer Biology Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research enter, showed that HPVs are associated with nearly all genital-tract cancers and ith a significant proportion of head and neck cancers. They conducted what is among the largest case-control studies of HPV-associated cancer and revealed that a variety of exposures - notably a high number of sexual partners and early age at first intercourse - were common across most of the anogenital cancer sites. The researchers also identified factors beyond sexual activity, such as immunosuppression, that contributed to HPV associated cancers.

The team played a pivotal role in making virus-like particle-based vaccines a reality, from the early basic science work to the epidemiology, to the proof-of-principle clinical trial that showed that a monovalent HPV 16 vaccine protected against HPV 16 infection and disease.

Additionally, Dr. Galloway and colleagues developed and tested new strategies for early detection and treatment of HPV-related cancers. Their clinical studies demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of using HPV DNA testing of clinician-collected cervical samples or self-collected vaginal samples in screening programs as well as the potential for using novel biomarkers to more accurately diagnose HPV-related cancers and precancerous lesions.