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Jeffrey Alan Sosman, MD, believes that spending time at the lab bench
is just as important as understanding and interacting with patients.
That belief is reflected in his work, which is focused on finding new
treatment options for skin cancer patients and researching personalized
treatments for melanoma,
the most lethal type of skin cancer.
The American Cancer Society recently chose Dr. Sosman to
receive the Mary Hendrickson-Johnson Melanoma Professorship, a $400,000
award available through 2013. The award, based on a generous gift from
the Mary Hendrickson-Johnson Foundation, recognizes an outstanding,
mid-career researcher who has made a landmark contribution in the area
of melanoma research and who continues to make significant efforts in
the field. The Foundation is named for Mary Hendrickson, who died from
metastatic melanoma nearly 20 years ago.
Dr. Sosman, who practices at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee, has a long track record in the field and has worked on a vaccine that may treat melanoma.
This award will help fund Dr. Sosman's research on new drugs
for treating melanoma. His goal is to define specific behavior and
signaling pathways in cancer cells and use that data to match patients
with personalized treatments.
“Being recognized with the Mary Hendrickson-Johnson Melanoma
Professorship from the Society is a humbling experience,” states Dr.
Sosman. “I appreciate the Society giving me the opportunity to take
novel ideas into the clinic.”
Melanoma accounts for less than 5% of skin cancer cases, but
it causes most skin cancer deaths. There are about 62,000 cases of
melanoma in this country each year.
For more information, see Melanoma: Detailed
Guide.
Revised: 05/01/2009
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