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Boston Children's Hospital's Frederick W. Alt, Ph.D., Receives the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society De Villiers International Achievement Award

Posted on: Thursday, 20 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has awarded its prestigious 2005 de Villiers International Achievement Award to noted cancer researcher Frederick W. Alt, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator based in Boston.

The award, named for the founders of the Society, will be presented at the Society's annual Journey of Hope Research Award Dinner, October 20, at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Alt has studied how instability within the genome leads to cancer and has worked to uncover the cellular mechanisms that normally suppress this process.

"Dr. Alt's discoveries have led to a greater understanding of the ways that cancers of immune cells develop and they hold promise for finding ways to control or perhaps prevent these diseases," said Marshall Lichtman, the Society's executive vice president, Research. "Dr. Alt's studies of the instability of the genome are central to our understanding of the events that lead to transformation of normal cells to cancer cells."

In the 1970s, while investigating how cancers become resistant to the chemotherapy drug methotrexate, Dr. Alt discovered a major form of genomic instability called gene amplification, a fundamental process in cancer that creates many copies of a gene. In the 1980s, he discovered the cancer-causing gene called N-myc. High levels of N-myc often are associated with aggressive disease, and N-myc gene amplification was subsequently found to be helpful in determining a patient's prognosis as well as measuring disease progression.

In recent years, Dr. Alt and his team have identified how a form of lymphoma develops when large pieces of chromosomes swap locations. Their observations about how chromosome rearrangements, or translocations, cause pro-B cell lymphoma in mice offer a fresh perspective on how cancers arise from increased expression of specific genes or regions of the genome.

"What intrigues me most is how cells harness the various mechanisms of genomic rearrangements to ensure a productive immune system while avoiding the potentially cancer-causing effects that can emerge when these processes go awry," says Dr. Alt.

Dr. Alt is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Boston's Children's Hospital. He also is the Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the Scientific Director of the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research. In addition to his research, Dr. Alt teaches immunology courses at Harvard Medical School and has authored more than 400 papers.

He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Over the span of his career, Dr. Alt has been the recipient of numerous cancer research awards, including the G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award from the American Association of Cancer Research; the Rabbi Shai Schacknai Prize from Hebrew University, the Pasarow Foundation Prize for Cancer Research and the Irvington Institute Scientific Leadership Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiologists and the European Molecular Biology Organization. He also serves on various national and international advisory boards and has chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the Irvington Institute for Biomedical Research and the Board of Scientific Councilors of the National Cancer Institute.

About the de Villiers International Achievement Award

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's de Villiers International Achievement Award and grant was created in 1953 to recognize outstanding research contributions made to advance the treatment of prevention of leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma. The award is named for the founders of the Society, the de Villiers family, whose son, Robert died of leukemia. The Society's highest scientific honor, it consists of a medal and a cash prize. Award winners receive a grant of $100,000 over a two-year period to support a research fellow in the laboratory of the honoree. Past recipients include such notable researchers as Nobel laureates David Baltimore, Ph.D., George H. Hitchings, Ph.D. and E. Donnall Thomas, M.D.

About The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, headquartered in White Plains, NY, with 66 chapters in the United States and Canada, is the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services. The Society's mission: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families. Since its founding in 1949, the Society has invested more than $424 million in research specifically targeting leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Last year alone, the Society made 2.5 million contacts with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals.

For more information about blood cancer, visit http://www.lls.org/ or call the Society's Information Resource Center (IRC), a call center staffed by master's level social workers, nurses and health educators who provide information, support and resources to patients and their families and caregivers. IRC information specialists are available at 800-955-4572, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.

Contact: Andrea Greif

(914) 821-8958

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

CONTACT: Andrea Greif of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society,+1-914-821-8958

Web site: http://www.lls.org/

Source: PRNewswire

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