Award Winners Named for the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
SAN ANTONIO — The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), an SABCS cosponsor, will honor two renowned researchers for their work in breast cancer at the 2019 SABCS, to be held Dec. 10-14 at the Henry B. González Convention Center, San Antonio.
Myles Brown, MD, is the recipient of the 2019 AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research award, supported by Aflac Inc. Celina Kleer, MD, will receive the 2019 AACR Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research, supported by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
“These researchers have made real progress in understanding mechanisms of breast cancer progression, which has informed novel therapies against this disease. They truly deserve these awards for their efforts in helping countless patients with breast cancer,” said SABCS Codirector Carlos Arteaga, MD, FAACR, ex officio member of both award selection committees, past president of the AACR, and director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern. “The hard work and dedication of Drs. Brown and Kleer have helped to shape our fundamental understanding of the complex interactions of hormones and proteins in breast cancer. Their lectures are among the many reasons why SABCS continues to be a leading global voice in breast cancer research.”
Brown, the Emil Frei III professor of medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, is being recognized for his pioneering research involving steroid receptor-coregulators that has put a spotlight on the dynamic ability of these proteins to regulate the genome. Notably, his research has elucidated the epigenetic factors underlying the action of steroid hormones and effectively shaped the current understanding of the role of nuclear hormone receptors in normal physiology and breast cancer. Brown will deliver a lecture on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 11:30 a.m. titled “Essential genes and cistromes in breast cancer.”
Kleer, the Harold A. Oberman collegiate professor of pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School and Rogel Cancer Center, is being recognized for her work in generating key insights into the development of aggressive forms of breast cancer and for advancing the characterization of clinical biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for these cancer subsets. Specifically, her groundbreaking research led to both the initial demonstration of EZH2 overexpression in metastatic hormone receptor negative breast cancer and the elucidation of molecular determinants of metaplastic breast carcinoma. Kleer will present a lecture on Friday, Dec. 13, at 11:30 a.m. titled “Novel non-canonical functions of EZH2 in triple negative breast cancer.”