At the opening session of ASCO's 46th Annual Meeting, held in Chicago this past June, The ASCO Cancer Foundation® announced the recipients of the 2010 Brigid Leventhal Merit Award and the 2010 Bradley Stuart Beller Merit Award. These ASCO Cancer Foundation Merit Awards are designed to promote clinical research performed by young scientists and to provide fellows with an opportunity to present their research and interact with other clinical cancer investigators at ASCO scientific meetings.

Brigid Leventhal Merit Award

The Brigid Leventhal Merit Award, which is granted to the author of the highest-ranked abstract submitted in the field of pediatric cancer research, is named in honor of Brigid Leventhal, MD, a pioneer in children's oncology at Johns Hopkins University who dedicated her career to helping young patients with cancer.

The 2010 Brigid Leventhal Merit Award was presented to Laura E. Hogan, MD, a fellow in pediatric hematology/oncology at the New York University Medical School, for research focused on creating an integrated genomic profile by using high-throughput RNA sequencing to detect mutations, insertions, deletions, and fusion transcripts in relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Dr. Hogan displayed the findings of her research during the Annual Meeting's Pediatric Cancer Poster Discussion Session.¹

As of the Annual Meeting, Dr. Hogan and her team had performed RNA sequencing on matched-diagnosis/relapse bone marrow samples from pediatric patients with relapsed ALL by looking for novel mutations that might explain the chemoresistance found at recurrence. Dr. Hogan has worked to sequence four pediatric matched-diagnosis/relapse pairs (ie, eight marrow samples) from patients with B-precursor ALL. The team found 232 variants that were relapse-specific and that were shared among all four patients. They identified 2,454 variants that were relapse-specific and shared among three of the four patients and 16,100 relapse-specific variants shared by two of the four patients.

These findings are significant because RNA sequencing in relapsed pediatric ALL reveals many novel relapse-specific variants shared among patients. Although further analysis of these variants will be necessary to determine their functional significance and therapeutic relevance, Dr. Hogan believes they hold the potential to identify new pathways to target with therapy. She added that validation of a subset of these variants in a larger group of patients is underway.

Bradley Stuart Beller Merit Award

Whereas the Brigid Leventhal Merit Award was granted Dr. Hogan as the author of the highest-ranked abstract submitted to the ASCO Annual Meeting in the field of pediatric cancer research, the Bradley Stuart Beller Merit Award is awarded to the fellow with the overall highest-ranked abstract, as determined by the Scientific Program Committee. The award-created by Ronald E. Beller, PhD, former ASCO Vice President and CEO, and his wife, Judith Beller (along with The ASCO Cancer Foundation Board of Directors), in honor of their son, Bradley Stuart Beller-was presented to Kristin A. Higgins, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, for her research, "Characterizing the clinical relevance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in human tumors."²

Dr. Higgins explains EMT as a biologic process with a substantial role in normal embryologic development. Later in life, EMT can also lead to adverse cellular events, including the ability of a tumor cell to transform into a motile, mesenchymal cell that can then invade and metastasize.

In this particular study, Dr. Higgins and her colleagues studied EMT in breast, lung, and prostate cancer. "We basically created an in vitro model of EMT in cancer cells, analyzed genomic changes occurring in these cells, and developed a genomic signature predictive of EMT," she explained. "This signature predicts for clinical outcomes including metastasis-free and disease-free survival in [patients with] breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lung cancer."

Dr. Higgins plans to use an EMT genomic signature in hopes of identifying patients at high-risk for development of metastatic disease, and in turn, developing a treatment aimed at preventing this process. "This award validates our hard work thus far and speaks to the importance of translational research," said Dr. Higgins. "I feel honored to have been selected amongst a group of such outstanding people." ■

References

1. Hogan LE, Mason C, Meyer J, et al: High throughput transcriptome sequencing of pediatric relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Abstract 9521. J Clin Oncol 28(15 suppl):683s, 2010.

2. Higgins KA, Walters KS, Potti A, et al: Characterizing the clinical relevance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in human tumors. Abstract 10507. J Clin Oncol 28(15 suppl):724s, 2010.

Selected portions reprinted from ASCO Daily News. © American Society of Clinical Oncology. (From "Pediatric Oncology Fellow Receives Top Merit Award for Genomic Research on Relapsed ALL." ASCO Daily News Vol. 13, No. 2, 2010:10C; and from "Dr. Kristin Higgins Receives 2010 Bradley Stuart Beller Merit Award." ASCO Daily News Vol. 13, No. 1, 2010:28C.) All rights reserved.