Longtime cancer researcher Charles Sawyers named first STAT Biomedical Innovation Award winner

Dr. Charles Sawyers’ work over a 34-year career not only led to the development of the blockbuster drug Gleevec for chronic myelogenous leukemia, but to a better understanding of a concept that’s now fundamental to oncology — that cancers can overcome powerful drugs to develop resistance. And in a rare example, Sawyers’ role in creating the prostate cancer drug Xtandi was not born within industry, but from within the halls of academia.

And for those milestones, Sawyers, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was just named the first-ever winner of the STAT Biomedical Innovation Award. The award is presented to a top researcher in biomedicine whose work has helped to define their field — and, in the process, helped patients. He will accept the honor at the inaugural STAT Summit on Thursday in Cambridge, Mass.

Sawyers wasn’t always interested in medicine, though both his parents were physicians, nor did he originally have an eye toward cancer treatments. Still, he did