Arul Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD Recognized for Outstanding Research

By Lynn McCain | May 3 2021

Congratulations to Arul Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD, who was announced as the Science of Oncology Award and Lecture recipient by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). As part of this award, Chinnaiyan will present a 30-minute lecture entitled “ “ at the ASCO Annual Meeting, to be held virtually on June 4-8, 2021.

“I am deeply grateful to be honored by ASCO, an organization that that has had such a direct impact on the treatment and care of cancer patients across the world,” responded Chinnaiyan. “If what we have learned in terms of the genetic basis of cancer can be translated to better and more precise treatments for cancer patients, this will be the ultimate goal that we collectively strive for.”

Created in 2005, the Science of Oncology Award and Lecture is presented annually in recognition of a recipient’s outstanding contributions to basic or translational research in cancer. Chinnaiyan is being recognized for his laboratory’s work on “functional genomic and bioinformatic approaches to study cancer for the purposes of understanding tumor biology as well as to discover genetic drivers. The landmark study from his laboratory is the discovery of TMPRSS2-ETS gene fusions in a majority of prostate cancers, the first causative gene fusion in a common solid tumor.”