By Bio-IT World staff
July 1, 2009 | Axel Ullrich and Janet Rowley were independently named today as the 2009 recipients of two prestigious awards in biomedicine.
Johnson & Johnson named Axel Ullrich, director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany, as the winner of the 2009 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, worth $100,000. And cancer geneticist Janet Rowley was named the winner of the $500,000 Gruber Foundation Genetics Prize for groundbreaking work that established cancer as a genetic disease.
Ullrich was selected for his molecular biology research in “the discovery of protein therapeutics for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including diabetes and cancer,” said Solomon Snyder, distinguished service professor of Neuroscience, Pharmacology and Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who chaired the selection committee. “He is one of few basic scientists whose work not only has influenced academic research, but also has helped millions of patients suffering from several major chronic diseases… His work has had a remarkable impact on human health and truly embodies the efforts of the Award’s namesake, ‘Dr. Paul,’ who helped save millions of lives through his contribution to the discovery and development of more than 80 medicines.”
Ullrich pioneered the translation of genomic discoveries into novel approaches for the treatment of major diseases. In 1987, Ullrich and colleagues found that the neu/HER2 gene is amplified in more than 30 percent of invasive breast cancers. That discovery led to the development of the anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody (Herceptin) that has been a frontline therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer for a decade. It was the first targeted therapeutic agent developed in response to a newly discovered gene with an oncogenic function in human cancer.
Later, Ullrich identified the VEGF (the mitogen vascular endothelial growth factor) as a ligand of the receptor tyrosine kinase VEGFR2/Flk1, and was involved in regulating tumor angiogenesis. Inhibiting the VEGF receptor suppresses blood vessel formation in tumors and retards cancer cell growth. A derivative of a small molecule inhibitor of VEGFR2 kinase, Sugen’s SU5416, was approved in 2006 for the treatment of kidney carcinoma and gastro-intestinal stromal tumors.
In a statement, Ullrich said he was privileged to join the company of so many outstanding scientists. “Dr. Paul is a legend whose work had a tremendous impact on combating some of the world’s most serious diseases.” He will receive the award in September during a ceremony in Beerse, Belgium.
Joining Sol Snyder on the selection committee were a cadre of distinguished life scientists, including geneticist Mary-Claire King; Nobel laureates Jean Marie Lehn, Craig Mello, and Hartmut Michel; former president of Merck Research Laboratories Ed Scolnick; and Sir Richard Sykes, chair of the UK National Health Service.
Genetics Prize
Cancer cytogeneticist Janet Rowley, the Blum-Riese Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, is named the winner of the 2009 Genetics Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, for her discoveries of recurrent chromosomal abnormalities in leukemia and lymphoma. Those discoveries revolutionized how cancer is understood and treated.
The $500,000 prize will be presented in Hawaii this October at the annual convention of the American Society of Human Genetics.
“Rowley’s work established that cancer is a genetic disease,” said Mary-Claire King, herself a trailblazing cancer geneticist and past winner of the Gruber prize. “She demonstrated that mutations in critical genes lead to specific forms of leukemia and lymphoma, and that one can determine the form of cancer present in a patient directly from the cancer’s genes. We are still working from her paradigm.”
Rowley began studying leukemia chromosomal abnormalities in the 1960s, when there was little evidence for the role of genetic aberrations in cancer. Rowley said she “became a kind of missionary,” believing that “chromosome abnormalities were important and hematologists should know about them.”
One of her biggest discoveries was that the “Philadelphia” chromosome observed in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) was due to a chromosomal translocation. Many other translocations were subsequently discovered in other cancers, which in turn led to the discovery of the oncogenes at the chromosomal junctions. By 1980, she had redefined the field of cancer cytogenetics. The development of Gleevec by Novartis, can be traced to Rowley’s original research on the translocation associated with CML.
“We’re still working on the leukemias,” said Rowley. “There’s a lot of evidence that translocations and other chromosome abnormalities aren’t sufficient to make a cell malignant. We’re looking for the other mechanisms involved.”