Faculty Member Charles L. Sawyers

Physician-scientist Charles L. Sawyers has been appointed Chairman of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's new Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program (HOPP) and the first incumbent of the Marie Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair. HOPP will capitalize on recent advances in understanding cancer cell biology and in the development of molecularly targeted drugs and other rationally based interventions. It will bring together physician-scientists from various clinical and scientific disciplines to conduct cutting-edge translational research across many types of cancer.

"Dr. Sawyers is a productive and versatile translational researcher at the forefront of the effort to relate molecular changes in cancer to response and resistance to drugs," said Memorial Sloan-Kettering Physician-in-Chief Robert E. Wittes. "His interests range over a number of tumor types, but his mechanistic focus can be applied to any kind of cancer."

Dr. Sawyers' work examines how signaling pathway abnormalities in cancer cells can be exploited as targets for new cancer drugs. The promise of this approach is best exemplified by Dr. Sawyers' key role in the clinical development of imatinib (Gleevec®), which targets the molecular cause of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) with minimal side effects. His group subsequently deciphered the molecular basis for resistance to imatinib. Based on this insight, he led the development of a second drug called dasatinib, which is effective in CML patients whose disease fails to respond to imatinib. He has extended this approach to other diseases, including prostate cancer and glioblastoma, through laboratory-based studies that suggest new treatment strategies now undergoing clinical testing.

HOPP will enable broad discovery, development, and clinical testing of molecularly based interventions -- diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive -- across the institution.

Dr. Sawyers comes to the Center after nearly two decades at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center and a clinical fellowship in hematology/oncology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. His awards include the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the David A. Karnofsky Award.