rector of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine and the director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, received the David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award on June 3 at the ASCO meeting. The award pays tribute to his research on immune tolerance and adoptive immunotherapy for cancer. He is credited with developing genetically engineered versions of patients' own T cells, called chimeric antigen receptor

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... T cells, to treat relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia and other conditions. Also at the ASCO meeting, Brian J. Druker, MD, director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, received the Science of Oncology Award for his outstanding contributions to basic and translational research. Druker performed the preclinical studies and led the clinical trials that were instrumental in the development of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (Gleevec; Novartis) to treat chronic myeloid leukemia characterized by the BCR-ABL1 gene fusion. The drug is also used to treat certain acute lymphocytic leukemias and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.