UP FRONT
The Society Pages
Liberto Pechet, MD (1926-2015)
Liberto Pechet, MD, passed away September
16, 2015, after a brief illness. He is remembered as a father, hematologist, educator,
researcher, and helper to those in need. Born
in Romania, Dr. Pechet graduated in 1952 from
Hadassah Medical School Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel, before immigrating to the
United States in 1957. As a physician with
over 60 years of experience, Dr. Pechet was
employed at the University of Massachusetts
Memorial Medical Center in Worcester and St.
Vincent’s Hospital (both in Worcester, Massachusetts), the University of Colorado/Veterans
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Awarded to Three Scientists
for Mechanistic Studies of
DNA Repair
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
jointly awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in
Chemistry to three scientists for their
work in the mechanistic studies of DNA
repair:
Tomas Lindahl, FRS,
FMedSci, Francis Crick
Institute and Clare Hall
Laboratory, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, for discovering
base excision repair,
Tomas Lindahl, FRS,
the molecular machinFMedSci
ery that constantly
counteracts the collapse of our DNA.
Paul Modrich, MD,
Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
and Duke University
School of Medicine,
Durham, North
Carolina, for mapping
Paul Modrich, MD
nucleotide excision
repair, the mechanism that cells use to repair UV damage
to DNA.
Aziz Sancar, MD,
PhD, University
of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, North
Carolina, for demonstrating mismatch
Aziz Sancar, MD, PhD
repair, the mechanism through which
the cell corrects errors that occur when
DNA is replicated during cell division.
12
ASH Clinical News
Hospital in Denver, and Harvard University
and Beth Israel Hospital (both in Boston,
Massachusetts). During his career, he served
as a co-author of Wallach’s Interpretation
of Diagnostic Tests and published articles in
Blood, The New England Journal of Medicine,
Thrombosis Research, and the Journal of the
American Medical Association.
Dr. Pechet is survived by his wife, Giselle
Solomovitz, their two daughters, and their
granddaughter.
Together, Drs. Lindahl, Modrich, and
Sancar’s research demonstrates how
cells repair damaged DNA and safeguard
the genetic information at a molecular
level. “Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell
functions and is, for instance, used for
the development of new cancer treatments,” according to a press release from
the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Source: Nobel Prize/Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences press
release, October 8, 2015.
Michael White, MD, and Joshua Mendell, MD, PhD
Thomas LeBlanc Receives
Sojourns Award for Palliative Care Project
Thomas LeBlanc,
MD, assistant professor of medicine
in Hematological
Malignancies and
Cellular Therapy
at Duke University
Thomas LeBlanc, MD
School of Medicine,
has received a twoyear, $180,000 grant from the Cambia
Health Foundation as part of its annual
Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program.
The grant will support his work in
improving the integration of palliative
care into blood cancer care. Dr. LeBlanc
is one of 10 recipients of these awards,
which promote palliative care workforce development by funding research,
clinical, educational, or policy projects.
Other grants are supporting research in
emergency medical communication in
palliative care, nurse competency in advanced care planning, and communication with parents of pediatric patients.
Source: Duke University press release, September 2, 2015.
UT Southwestern Cancer
Researchers Receive $11.7
Million in NCI Outstanding
Investigator Awards
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has
awarded $11.7 million in NCI Outstanding Investigator awards to Michael
White, MD, professor of cell biology,
and Joshua Mendell, MD, PhD, professor of molecular biology, both researchers at University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center’s Harold C. Simmons
Comprehensive Cancer Center. Both
awards provide seven years of funding
to allow the recipie nts to pursue highrisk/high-reward projects.
Dr. White, who studies personalized
cancer therapies, received more than
$6.5 million for his work to identify biomarkers that can help personalize therapy by identifying patients who might
respond best to certain treatments.
“With this new research support, we
will identify effective intervention
targets that are required for tumor formation in diverse genetic backgrounds,
develop lead compounds that inactivate
these targets, and determine features
that allow detection of the presence of
these targets in patients,” he said in a
press release.
Dr. Mendell, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator who studies
biologic mechanisms involved in cancer,
received $5.1 million for his lab’s investigation into how a class of genes that
produce noncoding RNAs contributes to
cancer. “A better understanding of noncoding RNAs and the cellular mechanisms they control may one day lead
to the development of new anti-cancer
therapies,” Dr. Mendell said.
Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center press release, September
11, 2015.
Wilmot Cancer Institute’s
Research Director Wins
$6.3-Million Outstanding
Investigator Award
Hartmut Land, PhD,
director of research
and co-director
at University of
Rochester Medicine’s
Wilmot Cancer Institute in New York, has
Hartmut Land, PhD
received a $6.3-million Outstanding
Investigator Award from the NCI, which
will provide Dr. Land with seven years of
uninterrupted funding to pursue longterm projects. With this funding, Dr.
Land will continue to test his hypothesis that different cancers have many
shared features, and understanding the
common characteristics among diverse
types of cancer might unlock the next
generation of targeted treatments.
Source: University of Rochester Medical Center press release,
September 17, 2015.
November 2015