December 5, 2017
UChicago scientist and CBC Awardee, Thomas Gajewski, receives a William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology
Congratulations to Dr. Thomas Gajewski, UChicago, who, along with Rafi Ahmed, PhD, Emory University, received the highest honors from the Cancer Research Institute for their fundamental contributions to the fields of immunology and cancer immunotherapy in 2017. Gajewski is honored with the 2017 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology. Gajewski received two CBC Awards in the past: a CBC Catalyst Award (2013) and a CBC Postdoctoral Research Award (2014), the latter with Stefani Spranger, a postdoc in his lab at the time.
Ahmed, Gajewski to Receive Top Awards from Cancer Research Institute
Targeted Oncology | December 1, 2017
Rafi Ahmed, PhD, of Emory University, and Thomas F. Gajewski, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago, received the highest honors from the Cancer Research Institute for their fundamental contributions to the fields of immunology and cancer immunotherapy during the Institute’s 31st Annual Awards Dinner on Tuesday, November 14, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Ahmed, director of the Emory Vaccine Center, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and an investigator at the Emory Center for AIDS research, will receive the 2017 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology for his seminal work on immune memory, as well as his definitive studies of the role of PD-1 receptor in T cell exhaustion during chronic infection.
Thomas F. Gajewski, MD, PhD
The University of Chicago
Gajewski, leader of the Immunology and Cancer Program, director of the Human Immunologic Monitoring core facility at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, and a professor in the departments of pathology and medicine, will receive the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology. Gajewski’s work has enhanced the understanding of the interactions between tumors, immune cells, and other factors that play a role in the immune response to cancer.
Each Coley Award honoree will receive a $5,000 prize and a gold medallion bearing the likeness of Coley.
Also during the awards dinner, Shannon J Turley, PhD, will receive the 2017 Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology. The award recognizes a former CRI-Irvington postdoctoral fellow whose research has had a major impact on immunology.
Funded by CRI from 2002-2004, Turley is a principal scientist on the cancer immunology team at Genentech, where she focuses on how stromal cells and immune cells influence each other in the context of inflammation, cancer, fibrosis, and response to immunotherapy.
Source:
Adapted (with modifications) from Targeted Oncology, posted on December 1, 2017.
See also:
CBC Awards:
CBC Catalyst Award (2013):
PIs: Thomas Gajewski and Haochu Huang (UChicago), and Xiaozhong Wang (NU) for the project:
▸ Identifying Immune Evasion Mechanisms in Tumors Via a Genome-Wide shRNA Screen
CBC Postdoctoral Research Award (2014):
PIs: Stefani Spranger and Thomas Gajewski (UChicago) for the project:
▸ Influence of specific oncogenic pathways on T cell infiltration in primary melanoma