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 was introduced in 2006 and is awarded to an outstanding career scientist in the field of hormone-dependent cancers at each subsequent 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.

The Rob Sutherland Award was introduced in 2019, and is presented to an outstanding early-mid career researcher at the PacRim meeting in recognition of Professor Rob Sutherland’s seminal contributions to research into hormone-dependent cancers, including those of the breast, prostate and ovary, his commitment to training and mentoring younger scientists, and his contributions to the PacRim Meeting series. Rob initially achieved international renown for his ground-breaking research on the effect of estrogens and anti-estrogens (tamoxifen) on estrogen receptor regulated transcription of critical cell cycle genes in breast cancer. Rob was a trailblazer in many fields, including genome research. In recognition of this, Australia’s first International Cancer Genome Consortium paper, which was on pancreatic cancer and published in Nature, was dedicated to him.

Rob studied at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, receiving a Masters of Agricultural Science in 1972. He then completed his PhD in 1974 in the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. In 1978, he was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and Reader in Cancer Medicine, University of Sydney, before joining the Garvan Institute of Medical Research as a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. Rob was Director of the Cancer Research Program at the Garvan Institute for 27 years. In this role, he fostered the careers of many young scientists who went on to have very successful scientific careers in breast cancer biology and nuclear receptor function. In 2010 he received the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Researcher and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.

An understanding of how genes can predict the course of cancers and provide opportunities for new target therapies was the driving force behind Rob’s research and the impetus to establish the Kinghorn Cancer Centre at the Garvan Institute in Sydney. He was the inaugural Director of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre in Darlinghurst (Sydney, Australia) until his tenure and research career was cut short in October 2012 at the age of 65 due to pancreatic cancer.