American Cancer Society Names New Research ProfessorAmerican Cancer Society Lewis L. Lanier, PhD Receives $400,000 Five-Year Grant The Research Professorship, the Society's most prestigious research award, is given to outstanding mid-career cancer researchers who are contributing significantly to a particular discipline within a field of cancer research. Each five-year $400,000 grant allows professors to concentrate their specific area of scientific investigation by relieving them of major administrative and/or teaching responsibilities. Each grant is renewable for one additional five-year term.  For two decades Dr. Lanier has studied the body's immune system and how it protects against disease. As an American Cancer Society Professor, he will continue his work on identifying specific substances unique to the surface of tumor cells, which could lead to new targets for diagnosing and treating cancer. "The immune system has the potential to recognize and eliminate tumor cells," Dr. Lanier said. "The goal of my research program is to understand how this process works and to use this information for the treatment of cancer." Dr. Lanier's laboratory, in the early 1980s, was one of the first to isolate so-called human natural killer (NK) cells, the specific type of white blood cell, or lymphocyte, able to differentiate between normal cells and cells that are becoming cancerous. NK cells then attack those transformed cells to eliminate them. "Dr. Lanier is one of the leading, international experts in NK-cell biology," said Harmon J. Eyre, MD, American Cancer Society chief medical officer. "His pioneering research on the immune recognition of cancer has had a dramatic effect on our understanding of the disease." Dr. Lanier received his PhD at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1978. He held two postdoctoral fellowships, one supported by a Walter Winchell Cancer Fund Fellowship, before taking a position with Becton Dickinson in 1981 as a senior research scientist and later an associate research director. In 1991, he joined the senior staff at DNAX, rising to the level of a director by 1997. He has been a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Cancer Research Institute at UCSF since 1999. Dr. Lanier is a member of the governing body of the American Association of Immunologists and will serve as president in 2006-2007.
For more information, or to contact American Cancer Society, see their website at: www.cancer.org |
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