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Carl H. June, MD, receives ASCO’s highest scientific honor
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Carl H. June, MD, received this year’s David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award.
The award — the highest scientific honor bestowed by ASCO — is presented to an oncologist who made outstanding contributions to cancer research, diagnosis and treatment.
June received an honorarium, a plaque, support to attend the ASCO Annual Meeting, and the opportunity to deliver a 30-minute lecture during the meeting’s opening session this morning.
June serves as Richard W. Vague professor in immunotherapy at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapy at Abramson Cancer Center, and director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Penn.
The award recognizes June’s work developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Trials of this treatment approach started at Penn in 2010, and two of the first three patients to undergo this therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia remain in remission nearly 7 years later.
Several other studies have been conducted to evaluate the approach for treatment of several other malignancies, including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, breast cancer, glioblastoma, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.