Awards

Ron Ross Award and Rob Sutherland Award Recipients
Past and Present

Ron Ross Award

The Ron Ross Award and Oration is a feature of the PacRim Breast and Prostate Cancer Meetings and acknowledges Ron Ross’s extensive contributions in the field of hormonal carcinogenesis.  It is awarded to an outstanding career scientist in the field of hormone-dependent cancers at each PacRim meeting.  Ron sadly died of brain cancer on April 21^st, 2006, at the age of 57, having published over 350 papers, many in Science and other leading journals. In addition to being head of one of the USA’s most successful departments of preventive medicine, Ron was Deputy Director of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California (USC).  Ron was a colleague and friend of many of us and integral to the success of the first two PacRim Meetings, being the convenor of the second meeting in Palm Springs in 2005.

Ron was a leading expert in menopause hormone therapy and the causes and prevention of hormone-related cancers such as those of the prostate, breast, ovary and endometrium. He also made seminal discoveries regarding the aetiology of bladder and liver cancers. Ron trained in medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and was awarded the University of Iowa Alumni Association’s highest honour, the Distinguished Alumni Award, for his research accomplishments in cancer epidemiology. Ron joined the USC faculty in 1976. He was the Flora L. Thornton Chairman of Preventive Medicine and the Catherine and Joseph Aresty Professor of Preventive Medicine and Urology in the Keck School of Medicine, USC.

Under Ron’s leadership, the Department of Preventive Medicine became the #1 ranked Department of Preventive Medicine in the United States. Throughout his career, Ron was a mentor and friend to faculty members and trainees in the Department of Preventive Medicine at USC and to many others in the field of hormonal carcinogenesis. He is greatly missed by colleagues and friends worldwide who had the pleasure of interacting with him.

2024 Ron Ross Award

This year there were six exemplary nominees:  Susan Clarke, Gail Risbridger, Peter Nelson, Vanessa Hayes, Laura Esserman and Geoffrey Greene.

Congratulations to this year’s winner:
Professor Geoffrey Greene

Professor Geoffrey (Geof) Greene is the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor and Chair of the Ben May Department for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago. He is also the Co-Director of the Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research and the Associate Director for Basic Sciences in the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center (UCCCC). Geof’s research has contributed enormously to our understanding of steroid hormone mechanisms action in development, homeostasis and disease, in particular cancer.

Geof was involved in the purification of the estrogen receptor-alpha (ER) protein, which resulted in the first antibody against any nuclear receptor. These antibodies were essential for developing clinical IHC-based assays for ER, revolutionising our ability to stratify breast cancer patients for therapy. These resources subsequently allowed Geof to clone and sequence the ER cDNA from human cells contributing to a quantum leap in our understanding of the structure and function of this class of nuclear hormone receptors. The Greene lab was the first to determine the 3D structure of ER bound to the active 4-hydroxytamoxifen metabolite of tamoxifen, revealing how it acts as an antagonist in the breast by blocking an essential activating function (AF-2) of the ER ligand-binding domain. Geof

was subsequently involved in the initial discovery of ESR1 mutations in treatment-resistant patient samples and by using x-ray crystallography, his lab was the first to explain how activating ESR1 mutations (e.g., Y537S) stabilise the constitutively active conformation of ER, notably before their importance in aromatase-inhibitor resistance and disease progression was appreciated. His work spans fundamental biological discovery, all the way through to genuine translation of these findings. Our understanding of nuclear receptor biology would not be the same without his substantial contributions.

Geof has won a number of awards, including the Ernst Oppenheimer award from the Endocrine Society, the first Tartikoff-Semel award, the 2006 North American Menopausal Society’s NAMs/Wyeth Pharmaceutical SERMs Research Award and the 2009 Susan G. Komen for the Cure Brinker Award for his contributions to women’s health and breast cancer prevention and treatment. He was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2016. Geof is an outstanding mentor and educator for trainees in the field and he has trained numerous scientists who are now leaders in the hormone-dependent cancer and nuclear receptor communities.