Last week, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute announced that their director for the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention, Judy E. Garber, MD, MPH, has been honored by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) for outstanding achievement in clinical cancer research.
Garber, a medical oncologist and clinical cancer geneticist, will receive the Joseph H. Burchenal Memorial Award at the AACR annual meeting in Washington, DC, and will give a lecture on April 4, 2017 at the Washington Convention Center, entitled “Cancer Genetics Comes of Age.”
Dr. Garber is affiliated with Dana-Farber’s Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers, and is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She established the Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic at Dana-Farber, the first program of its kind, “creating a new clinical field that has changed the practice of cancer medicine,” said the citation. Garber has led studies of epidemiology, cancer surveillance, cancer genetics service delivery, and chemoprevention in hereditary cancers. Dr. Garber is also a leader in research into the characteristics and treatment of triple negative or basal-like breast cancer, the most common form in women with BRCA1 mutations. Her translational research focuses on the evaluation of novel agents targeting DNA repair defects in breast cancer, including PARP inhibitors for treatment and prevention of breast cancer and other BRCA-associated cancers.
Garber is a past president of the AACR, current member of the AACR Foundation Board, and is a Fellow of the AACR Academy. She serves on the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute and was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2013. She also serves as the Chair of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Scientific Advisory Board.
The Joseph H. Burchenal Memorial Award was established in 1996 to recognize outstanding achievements in clinical cancer research. It is named for the late Dr. Joseph H. Burchenal, honorary member and past president of the AACR, and a major figure in clinical cancer research and chemotherapy. For more information on the American Association for Cancer Research, please visit www.aacr.org.
Dr. Garber was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013.
