SU2C Dream Team members continue to make headlines and win awards for their groundbreaking research. On September 10, SU2C Breast Cancer Dream Team Leader Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, with two colleagues H. Michael Shepard, PhD and Axel Ullrich, PhD, received the 2019 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for the invention Herceptin and its development as a life-saving therapy for women with breast cancer. Herceptin is a targeted therapy for breast cancer, the first of its kind to specifically block a cancer-causing protein. This drug reduces the risk of recurrence and extends survival time for patients with advance breast cancer that has spread to other organs, as well as early-stage disease. Every year, more than 50,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with the type of breast cancer that the drug attacks, and over 2.3 million individuals have received the treatment since it became available.
Subsequent to his work on Herceptin, Slamon led the SU2C Breast Cancer Dream Team, whose research contributed to the development of palbociclib, approved by the FDA in 2015. Read more.