September 18, 2009

Congratulations Charles L. Sawyers: Winner of 2009 Lasker-DeBakey

Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing with pride to announce that a 2009 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award has been given to a class of 1985 school of medicine alumnus, Charles L. Sawyers, for his groundbreaking work in the development of novel treatments for chronic myeloid leukemia. His contributions to the field have, in the words of the awards jurors, “converted this fatal cancer into a manageable chronic condition.”

This well-deserved honor for Dr. Sawyers accompanies the news that another Johns Hopkins alumnus, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Engineering, class of 1964), won the 2009 Mary Woodward Lasker Public Service Award.

Dr. Sawyers, chair of human oncology and pathogenesis at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is the son of another distinguished alumnus of our medical school, John Sawyers, class of 1949, a generous benefactor of Hopkins who had a stellar career at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

Sharing this year’s clinical medical research award with Brian J. Druker of the Oregon Health Sciences University and Nicholas B. Lydon (formerly with Novartis), Dr. Sawyers is past president of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and serves on the board of the American Association of Cancer Research and the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Councilors. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

I know you join me in offering him warm congratulations. He is an exemplar of the school, the physician-teacher-scholar whose work not only contributes to human health but also advances the science that will bring new treatments in the future.

Sincerely,

Edward D. Miller, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine