Cancer Research Institute Recognizes Immunologists With Annual Coley Awards

Immunology Author: Neeraja Sankaran This year, the New York City-based Cancer Research Institute (CRI) honored three prominent scientists with its William B. Coley Awards for Distinguished Research, which recognize outstanding research in the field of cancer immunology. The awards were presented at a black-tie dinner on June 28. Malcolm A.S. Moore, a hematologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), New York, and Timothy A. Springer, a professor of pathology at the Center for Blood Research, Harvard Medical School, were honored in the basic immunology category. Ferdy J. Lejeune, director of Centre Pluridisciplinaire D'Oncologie, Lausanne, Switzerland, received the clinical immunology prize. CRI is a nonprofit corporation that supports research in the field of cancer immunology through grants to postdoctoral fellows and investigators. The institute's annual awards recognizing outstanding achievements in the field were established in 1975 in honor of William B. Coley, a turn-of-the-century physician who pioneered the field of tumor vaccines and the father of CRI founder Helen Coley-Nauts. Moore was honored for his discovery of the granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) in humans. These molecules regulate the production and function of granulocytes, white blood cells that are important in fighting off infection in the body. Today G-CSF is the basis for a therapeutic product, Neupogen, from Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Widely used as an adjunct to chemotherapy in cancer, G-CSF enhances cancer therapy by "accelerating the recovery of the granulocytes in the blood and bone marrow, which are damaged by cancer-fighting drugs," Moore explains. Prior to his finding, molecules such as G-CSF that could regulate the growth of blood cells had been isolated only from mice, he recounts. However, he set about developing assays for culturing human blood cells because "we cannot always extrapolate results from murine systems. Until we had purified these molecules from human tissue sources and tested them in vivo, there was a lot of skepticism about what these molecules actually did." His seminal paper describing the activity of G-CSF (M.A.S. Moore, D.J. Warren, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 84:7134-8, 1987) has been referenced in more than 500 subsequent papers. A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, Moore, 51, received his bachelor's degrees in medicine (1963) and human physiology (1964) from the University of Oxford in England before going on to receive a D.Phil. in experimental hematology in 1967 from the same university. He obtained his postdoctoral training at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, also serving there as the head of the developmental biology laboratory. Since 1974, he has held several different positions at MSKCC and the Sloan-Kettering Research Institute for Cancer Research. REGULATORY ROUNDUP: Malcome A.S. Moore, left, and Timothy A. Springer were honored by the Cancer Research Institute for their discoveries of substances that modulate the immune response and have the potential for use as anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory therapies. Springer was recognized by CRI for his contributions to understanding another group of regulatory substances--adhesion molecules. His laboratory was responsible for the "discovery of molecules called leukocyte integrins and their ligands ICAM-1, ICAM-2, and ICAM-3," he states. "These molecules play an important role in various aspects of inflammation--they act as traffic signal molecules to regulate the migration of immune cells to sites of infection. We described how these molecules work in cooperation with antigen receptors on the surface of leukocytes to mediate specific immune responses." This work has several medical implications. For example, Springer notes, "understanding how to inhibit the migration of leukocytes to inflammatory sites is leading to the development of antiadhesion therapies against inflammatory diseases." Springer, 47, obtained a B.A. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in 1976. After a brief stint as a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Cambridge, England (1976-77), he returned as an assistant professor to Harvard Medical School, where he has been ever since, currently as the Latham Family Professor of Pathology. According to the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information, he is the most cited author with the highest impact in the field of immunology during the period 1990-94 (Science Watch, 6:1-2, 1995). A review article he wrote about adhesion molecules in 1990 (T. Springer, Nature, 346:425-32) has been cited more than 2,000 times. Lejeune, 56, was honored for developing an isolated limb perfusion method for administering chemotherapy specifically to tumors that are localized to a limb. The method has generated complete remission in greater than 90 percent of patients with advanced malignant melanomas, according to CRI officials. The Belgian scientist received both his medical degree (in 1964) and a research degree equivalent to an American Ph.D. (in 1976) from the Free University of Brussels. --- Neeraja Sankaran (The Scientist, Vol:9, #16, pg.15 , August 21, 1995) (Copyright © The Scientist, Inc.)

Cancer Research Institute Recognizes Immunologists With Annual Coley Awards

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