The European Association for Cancer Research’s Mike Price Gold Medal Award is a biennial award recognising a senior researcher who has made exceptional contributions to the progress of cancer research in Europe. 

The Mike Price Gold Medal Award was created in 2012 in memory of Dr. Mike Price, Secretary General of the EACR for 21 years, who died of cancer in 2000. 

2022 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: Cédric Blanpain

Award presented at: EACR 2022 Congress, Seville, June 2022

Cédric Blanpain is MD/PhD and board certified in internal medicine from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. Cédric Blanpain is full professor, WELBIO investigator and director of the laboratory of stem cells and cancer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research group uses lineage-tracing approaches to study the role of stem cells during development, homeostasis and cancer. His group uncovered the existence of stem cells and progenitors acting during homeostasis and repair of the epidermis and uncovered a novel paradigm of lineage segregation in the mammary gland and prostate.

His lab was a pioneer in using mouse genetics to identify the cancer cell of origin of epithelial cancers. They identified the cancer cell of origin and the mechanisms regulating the early steps of tumor initiation in skin basal cell carcinoma, skin squamous cell carcinoma and mammary tumors. His lab developed novel approaches to unravel tumor heterogeneity and understand the mechanisms regulating the tumor states responsible for tumor growth, metastasis and resistance to anti-cancer therapy.

2020 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: Pier Giuseppe Pelicci

Award presented at: EACR 2020 Virtual Congress (18-19 June 2020)

Pier Giuseppe Pelicci is Director of Research and Chairman of the Department of Experimental Oncology of the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), in Milan. He is also full professor at the University of Milan, President of the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM), and Scientific Director of Alleanza Contro il Cancro (ACC), a network of 21 cancer research hospitals promoted and coordinated by the Ministry of Health, engaged in the set-up of multicentric mechanism–based clinical trials.

With a medical degree, a specialty in Internal Medicine and a PhD in Molecular Biology, he devoted his life to research, contributing to seminal discoveries in the elucidation of mechanisms of tumorigenesis (such as the identification /functional characterization of PML-RAR and mutated NPM oncogenes in myeloid leukemia) and the definition of the molecular basis of some of currently used targeted treatments (such as retinoic acid, HDAC- or histone- demethylase inhibitors).

More recently, he has been focusing on the biological and molecular characterization of normal and cancer stem cells, in leukemia and breast cancer, and mechanisms of DNA damage accumulation in normal and cancer cells.

2018 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: Karen Vousden

Award presented at: 25th Congress of the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR25), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 30 June - 03 July 2018

Dr Iain Foulkes, Cancer Research UK’s executive director of research and innovation, said: “We’re delighted that Professor Vousden’s world-leading research has been recognised by this year’s EACR Mike Price Gold Medal award. Cancer is a complex disease but thanks to research our understanding of the biology of the disease has improved tremendously. Her work has been at the forefront of this, revealing more about the tumour suppressor gene p53 and how it is controlled which is now being developed into new cancer treatments.

“As Cancer Research UK’s chief scientist she is helping to support the next generation of scientists and clinical researchers to make the breakthroughs that could help more people survive cancer.”

Professor Vousden’s research focuses on the tumour suppressor protein p53, which plays an important role in cancer prevention. Her lab is interested in understanding the signals that induce p53 and the functions of p53 that contribute to its ability to prevent cancer progression.  This work has also expanded to encompass an interest in cancer metabolism. Ultimately, the hope is to be able find ways to translate this research for cancer therapy.

2016 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: Michael Stratton

Award presented at: EACR24 Congress, Manchester, UK, 09-12 July 2016

Mike Stratton is Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. His primary research interests have been in the genetics of cancer. His early research focused on inherited susceptibility. He mapped and identified the major high risk breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and subsequently a series of moderate risk breast cancer and other cancer susceptibility genes.

In 2000 he initiated the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute which conducts systematic genome-wide searches for somatic mutations in human cancer. Through these studies he discovered somatic mutations of the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma and several other mutated cancer genes in lung, renal, breast and other cancers. He has described the basic patterns of somatic mutation in cancer genomes revealing underlying DNA mutational and repair processes.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and was Knighted by the Queen in 2013.

2014 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: Harald zur Hausen

Award presented at: EACR23 Congress, Munich, Germany, 05 - 08 July 2014

Professor zur Hausen was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008 for his work on the role of papilloma viruses in causing cervical cancer. His research made it possible to develop a vaccine against the third most frequent kind of cancer affecting women.

Harald zur Hausen was born on March 11, 1936 in Gelsenkirchen-Buer, Germany. He studied Medicine at the Universities of Bonn, Hamburg and Düsseldorf and received his M.D. in 1960. After his internship he worked as postdoc at the Institute of Microbiology in Düsseldorf, subsequently in the Virus Laboratories of the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia where he was later appointed as Assistant Professor. After a period of 3 years as a senior scientist at the Institute of Virology of the University of Würzburg, he was appointed in 1972 as Chairman and Professor of Virology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. In 1977 he moved to a similar position to the University of Freiburg. From 1983 until 2003 he was appointed as Scientific Director of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (German Cancer Research Center) in Heidelberg. He retired from this position in 2003.

2012 Mike Price Gold Medal Award winner: José Baselga

Award presented at: EACR22 Congress, Barcelona, Spain, 07 - 10 July 2012

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.