Melissa J. Parsons, B.S., graduate student of Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., and G. Ruth Thomas, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow of UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, San Francisco, Calif. are the first award recipients for 2005. They attended the AACR Special Conference "Regulation of Cell Death in Oncogenesis," which took place January 26-30, 2005 at the Hilton Waikoloa Village, Waikoloa, Hawaii.
The stipulations of the award are as follows: candidates must be scientists-in-training and first authors of meritorious scientific papers selected for presentation at AACR Special Conferences, or the Annual Meeting. They must be members of Women in Cancer Research (WICR), full-time graduate students, medical students, residents, clinical fellows or the equivalent, or postdoctoral fellows. Awards are made possible by grants from AstraZeneca and Novartis Oncology.
Dr. Brigid Grey Leventhal, the award's namesake, was a pioneer among women seeking a career in cancer research. Dr. Leventhal, one of only six women to graduate from the Harvard Medical School class of 1960, began her career in pediatric oncology at the National Cancer Institute. In 1976, she joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she remained until she herself succumbed to cancer in 1994.
Founded in 1907, the American Association for Cancer Research is a professional society of more than 24,000 laboratory, translational, and clinical scientists engaged in all areas of cancer research in the United States and in more than 60 other countries. AACR's mission is to accelerate the prevention and cure of cancer through research, education, communication, and advocacy. Its principal activities include the publication of five major peer-reviewed scientific journals: Cancer Research; Clinical Cancer Research; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Molecular Cancer Research; and Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. AACR's Annual Meeting attracts more than 15,000 participants who share new and significant discoveries in the cancer field. Specialty meetings, held throughout the year, focus on the latest developments in all areas of cancer research.