FUTURE: PERSONALIZED MEDICINE

Prof. Bert Vogelstein is a Clayton Professor of Oncology and Pathology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Johns Hopkins Medical School and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Prof. Vogelstein is recognized for his seminal contributions to the understanding of cancer genetics and genomics. His pioneering studies on colon cancer demonstrated that cancer results from a defined series of sequential genetic alterations. He was instrumental in the identification and characterization of tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes.

His team was the first to describe the genomic landscapes of human cancers through sequencing analysis of all genes within the human genome. He concomitantly developed a variety of new technologies for assessing the genetic alterations driving tumorigenesis. Such approaches have led to tests for genetic susceptibility to cancer, early diagnosis, and individualized therapies based on the genetic alterations within patients’ cancers.

Prof. Vogelstein’s many honors include the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research (1990), the Shacknai Memorial Prize from Hebrew University (1993), the Cancer, Aids, & Immunology Research Institute Award from Bar-Ilan University (1996), the Richard Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences (1993), the William Allan Award from the American Scoiety of Human Genetics (1998), the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1999), the Harvey Prize in Human Health from The Technion, Haifa (2001), the Pasarow Award in Medical Research (2008), The Charles Rodolphe Brupbacher Prize for Cancer Research(2010), The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2013), the Warren Triennial Prize from the Massachusetts General Hospital (2014), Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research in 2015 and the Bob Pinedo Cancer Care Award by The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences (2016).

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Society of Human Genetics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science. His advisory roles have included Chairman of the National Research Council Committee on the Biological and Biomedical Applications of Stem Cell Research and the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Human Genome Research Institute. He has also held editorial positions at Science, Molecular Cell, Cancer Cell and The New England Journal of Medicine.