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Roswell Park immunotherapy expert honored for melanoma research
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Igor Puzanov, MD, MSCI, FACP, received the Melanoma Foundation Award for outstanding and lifelong contributions to melanoma research.
Puzanov is chief of melanoma and director of the early phase clinical trials program at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Puzanov received the award in December at the Melanoma and Immunotherapy Bridge research meeting in Italy. The meeting is coordinated jointly by Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, Fondazione Melanoma, and Associazione Italiana di Oncologia Medica.
“Receiving the lifetime achievement award from the Melanoma Foundation is a dream to me,” Puzanov told OncoInfo, an Italian medical news outlet. “Knowing that my predecessors were all giants in the field of melanoma research and treatment, I am absolutely humbled and honored with this award, and I thank the foundation for it.”
Puzanov joined Roswell Park in 2016. He played a key role in the development and FDA approval of several drugs, including vemurafenib (Zelboraf, Genentech), pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) and talimogene laherparepvec (Imlygic, Amgen).
“We were all so pleased to see Igor receive this prestigious and well-deserved honor,” Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD, Roswell Park’s deputy director and chair of gynecologic oncology, as well as executive director of its Center for Immunotherapy, said in a press release. “Few physicians match the passion he throws into every aspect of his clinical and research activities, and his record of achievement is a testament to that energy.”