Two scientists who revolutionized cancer research have received a prize from Albany Medical Center.
Drs. Bert Vogelstein and Irving Weissman have won the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for their roles in transforming the medical community's understanding of cancer. Albany Med says the $500,000 award winners have contributed to the development of new methodologies for detection and treatment of cancer and for regenerative medicine. Dr. Vincent Verdile is dean of the Albany Medical College: "Our guests are receiving this award today in recognition of their immense body of research that has altered the modern understanding of cancer biology and cancer genetics, changing the paradigm for cancer research. Their creative and insightful discoveries that have yielded new and emerging therapies for cancer and other degenerative diseases embody the vision of the Albany Prize. Their major contributions to our understanding of what causes a tumor to grow, and how it becomes malignant, have contributed to the development of new ways to detect and treat cancer, leading to novel approaches capable of prolonging the lives of those who at one time would have been considered incurable."
The recipients each gave brief remarks at Tuesday’s ceremony: Dr. Weissman, renowned for his groundbreaking research on stem cells, has published more than 900 papers and during his career at Stanford University. He addressed high school students in the audience. "I was a mediocre B+ student until I had the chance, thanks to a Jewish-German emigree to Great Falls, Montana, to work in a laboratory, and to compare what I was learning in high school by memorizing to actually finding out that I could think about a situation, come up with a hypothesis and set up an experiment to do it. Think about getting yourself involved where your talent might be. You won't know if you have a talent for this until you try it, and it's just as important to find out it's not your thing, as finding out this is something you can use to go forward. And then follow your nose and believe in yourself."
Dr. Vogelstein is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. In 1989 he discovered a key gene that plays a major role in human cancer. "Scientists today, me included, work as part of a team, and I have been very fortunate to work with many talented, particularly young, scientists over the last forty years, more than a hundred. In fact, 126 to be exact. And these are students, college students, medical students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, high-school students, and together, they've not only done much of the work that this award recognizes, but actually have formulated many of the ideas that were seminal to this work. Marty Silverman in his book said that 'the purpose of life is to learn,' and I think it's fair to say that in aggregate, I probably have learned more from them than they have learned from me."
The doctors then held a lengthy question-and-answer session with students, followed by a reception.
The late Morris “Marty” Silverman established the Albany Medical Center Prize in 2000. A $50 million gift commitment from the Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation provides for the prize to be awarded annually for 100 years.
