AACR's Seventh Annual Landon Awards(ersity of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Ce...),Health

The translation of John Mendelsohns research from the laboratory into clinical practice created a new paradigm for treating cancer, providing novel treatment options and life-saving alternatives to many patients living with cancer, Foti said. His dedication and leadership deserve the highest recognition and we are proud to honor John for his revolutionary work.

For nearly three decades, Levine has been at the forefront of molecular cancer research and is a leading authority on the molecular basis of cancer. Best known for his co-discovery of the p53 tumor suppressor protein, Levine has led the way in uncovering the actions of p53, its biological significance and its mode of regulation in normal and cancer cells. Based on the findings of Levine and his colleagues, the study of p53 has become a promising focus of basic cancer research. This work and the collaboration of many researchers has led to the realization that p53 is a pivotal tumor suppressor gene which is mutated or otherwise inactivated in a majority of human cancer cases, a fact that underscores its critical importance in preventing the development of cancer.

Furthering his study of p53, Levine discovered another piece of the puzzle with the identification of the Mdm2 oncoprotein as a potent inhibitor of p53. The milestone discovery of the Mdm2-p53 interaction has become, in recent years, a target for drug development studies across industry and academia. These efforts have yielded several promising small molecule candidate drugs that activate p53 in tumor cells through disruption of the Mdm2-p53 interaction, and are currently being applied in clinical trials as p
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