José Baselga, M.D., Ph.D. to receive the first Mike Price Gold Medal at EACR-22 in Barcelona

The EACR Awards Committee is delighted to announce that the inaugural award will be made in Barcelona to José Baselga, M.D., Ph.D. and that Dr Baselga will give the award lecture on ‘The Future of Personalised Medicine’ at the culmination of the EACR congress.

José Baselga is the Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and Associate Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston where he is also Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

His research interests are in clinical breast cancer and in translational and early clinical research. He conducted the initial clinical trials with the monoclonal antibodies cetuximab and trastuzumab and is leading the clinical development of several new agents including pertuzumab and PI3K inhibitors. His main focus in the laboratory and in the clinic is in the area of novel anti-HER2 agents, in the identification of mechanisms of resistance to anti-HER2 agents and therapeutic approaches to target the PI3K pathway. He is also leading a number of neo-adjuvant trials in breast cancer and has been at the forefront of developing biomarker-based early and translational clinical trials.

Dr. Baselga received his M.D. and Ph.D. degree from the Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona. He completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and subsequently stayed on as a faculty member of the Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. From 1996 to 2010 he was the Chairman of the Medical Oncology Service and Founding Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.

A recipient of many awards during his distinguished career, Dr Baselga was most recently the recipient of the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute’s Gold Medal. He was selected for this prestigious award for representing Spain’s leadership in the area of cancer research.

Dr Baselga is a member of the Editorial Boards of Cancer Cell, Clinical Cancer Research and Annals of Oncology and he is the founding editor-in-chief on the new flagship journal Cancer Discovery. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed articles.

Julio Celis, EACR President said, ‘We are delighted that José Baselga will receive our new award the ‘Mike Price Gold Medal’.  Dr Baselga’s work and achievements are impressive and stand as an inspiration to all of us active in cancer research. The committee is also delighted that Dr Baselga has accepted our invitation to receive his award in person at EACR-22 and give an essential keynote talk highlighting the principal theme of our congress.’