Year 5. April 20. Honoring our Physician Scientists
Research and innovation are essential parts of the fabric of our department. Science and research can be challenging, but we are energized by the discoveries and accolades that our colleagues receive in the form of peer recognition. This weekend many members of the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM) were recognized for their scientific contributions at the recently concluded annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP) in Chicago. It is noteworthy, that our own Priscilla Y. Hsue, MD has served with distinction as the President of the ASCI, and during her presidential address she emphasized the tremendous contributions that physician scientists make to our biomedical enterprise and praised some of the innovations that we have put in place here at UCLA, including the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program, which continues to be a fertile training ground for future researchers in our faculty. This week’s post is largely dedicated to our colleagues who received special recognition by the ASCI and the AAP.
Celebrating Our ASCI Honorees
Election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) is one of the highest achievements in academic medicine. The ASCI is among the oldest medical honors societies in the U.S., and it is one of just a few that are dedicated exclusively to physician-scientists. Every spring, the ASCI Council selects up to 100 new members out of hundreds of nominations. Being chosen is a significant milestone in a physician-scientists’ career path and affords access to an exceptional network of peers who are advancing the future of medicine.
I am proud to share that translational oncologist Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH has been chosen to join this prestigious group, an exemplification of his phenomenal work as a translational scientist and leader in academic medicine. Dr. Bardia serves as assistant chief of translational research in the UCLA Division of Hematology-Oncology; director of translational research integration at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC); and program director of breast medical oncology at JCCC. He has dedicated his career to advancing precision medicine therapies and technologies for cancer.
Please join me in learning more about Dr. Bardia, and the five additional early-career physician-scientists in the DoM who were recognized by the ASCI this year for their exceptional promise and already impressive achievements so far. I am sure you will be as inspired by these wonderful colleagues as much as I have been!
Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH
Dr. Bardia was humbled and excited to learn he had been elected to the ASCI.
“This is an elite group of physicians worldwide who are nominated to the society, and I was humbled that I had the opportunity to be elected,” he recalled. “I was excited because I’m excited about moving the field of translational research forward — and this gives me additional confidence that we’re on the right path.”
As a translational oncologist, Dr. Bardia’s research bridges the gap between drug development in the lab and real-world use in the clinic. His patient-centered, “bench-to-bedside” work makes it possible for people with cancer to benefit from new breakthroughs quickly, potentially saving their lives from otherwise terminal conditions.
“I have always believed in patient-centered research,” Dr. Bardia said. “Any questions we’re answering always come back to, ‘Would it help Miss Smith, who’s sitting in front of me?’ That essentially has been the guiding star for me, always.”
Dr. Bardia’s described his research as being divided into two “buckets”: novel, improved therapies for people with cancer — particularly breast cancer — and tools for diagnosis and therapy selection. His main focus for the first bucket are antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), a highly targeted drug delivery mechanism where an antibody is bound to a chemotherapy agent. Each antibody in an ADC is designed specifically to target an antigen on a cancer cell type, so the ADC’s payload — the chemotherapy — hits cancer cells directly. That reduces the amount of “normal” cells that become collateral damage in the course of cancer treatment.
“The idea is that you’re targeting the cancer but not the normal cells, so you have better efficacy and lower toxicity,” Dr. Bardia explained. This approach ameliorates one of patients’ biggest fears about getting cancer: the side effects of treatment.
“The question is, ‘Can we develop therapies that are only not more effective than chemotherapy but also have lower toxicity?’,” Dr. Bardia explained. “That’s the promise of antibody-drug conjugates: In a way you are giving chemo, but preferentially to cancer cells, so you can improve efficacy and potentially reduce toxicity as well.”
Dr. Bardia anticipates that ADCs will make the current mode of chemotherapy obsolete within the next 5 to 10 years. Meanwhile, he is hard at work digging into the second bucket of his research interests: liquid biopsies.
“A big challenge in the field of therapies is target assessment. Cancers evolve over time, but it is not feasible to do repeated tumor biopsies,” Dr. Bardia explained. Liquid biopsies solve this problem by detecting cancer cells and fragments such as DNA in the bloodstream, thus identifying and molecularly characterizing the cancer at the same time.
This is far from an easy technology to develop. Trying to pick out cancer cells from the billions of other cells in the blood is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.
“You need something that works like a metal detector identify those unique cancer cells,” Dr. Bardia said. He and a collaborator from Massachusetts General Hospital, where Dr. Bardia was previously a faculty member, have developed a special chip that, when paired with higher blood volumes from patients, does just that. They published a study about the technology and potential translational application in Nature.
Thanks to developments like these, Dr. Bardia feels optimistic about what lies ahead.
“I think we’re in a very exciting time in the field of oncology, and medicine in general,” Dr. Bardia said. “With all the discoveries that have been made in the past and the therapies available, we can advance precision medicine and give a patient the right drug, at the right time, based on the right test.”
He added that he has been very impressed by the DoM since joining three years ago, especially with regards to mentorship, funding and administrative structure — three key pillars in academic research. Dr. Bardia has appreciated having a plethora of opportunities to mentor fellows and junior faculty members and is grateful for the department’s dedication to moving research forward, even in the face of crisis. He cited our provision of bridge funding in a challenging funding environment as evidence of this.
“In 2025, we were in a difficult place at UCLA in general in terms of the tight funding environment. But the department of medicine ensured that people who are interested in academic research can continue on this path,” he said. “That is critical, because the environment will change over time, but what should not stop is the progress.”
He added that the committees within our academic structure make it possible for faculty to pursue their passions.
“It could be academic research, it could be clinical practice, it could be education, it could be wellness — whatever you’re interested in, there is a path that one could follow,” Dr. Bardia said.
Dr. Bardia cheers on those who are considering becoming physician-scientists themselves, as the work is both exciting and meaningful.
“You have the opportunity to make discoveries, translate those discoveries into therapies and help patients with the disease,” he said. “It’s both discovery as well as compassion — it’s such a unique path where you can actually merge those two components. Whatever step you take on this path will have an impact on patients and the community.”
Early-Career DoM Rockstars Shine with ASCI Awards
The DoM serves as the springboard for the careers of many outstanding physician-scientists. This year the ASCI is recognizing several of our early-career and junior faculty with awards for their research achievements, a testament to the quality of our recruitment and mentorship efforts as well as to the high-impact science conducted in our department.
Shannon Wongvibulsin, MD, PhD, Carlos Irwin A. Oronce, MD, MPH, PhD and Lloyd Harvey, MD, PhD, received 2026 ASCI Emerging-Generation (E-Gen) Awards. These awards recognize the achievements of post-MD physician-scientists, prior to permanent faculty appointment, who are engaged in research and have not yet received career development awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). E-Gen Award recipients are invited to attend the Joint Meeting — a convocation of the ASCI, the Association of American Physicians and the American Physician-Scientists Association — and have the opportunity to take part in two years of programming.
Gloria Yiu, MD, PhD and Matthew S. Durstenfeld, MD, MAS receive 2026 ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Awards. This honor is given to early-career faculty who have already received career development or K08 awards from the NIH but who do not yet have R01 or equivalent awards. They too receive admission to the Joint Meeting.
Meet the DoM’s 2026 early-career ASCI awardees below !
Shannon Wongvibulsin, MD, PhD
ASCI E-Gen Award
Dr. Wongvibulsin feels fortunate and grateful to the mentors who guided her on the path to becoming an ASCI E-Gen awardee.
“It is an honor to be included in such a distinguished community of physician-scientists, and this recognition reflects the exceptional mentorship and support I have been privileged to receive,” said Dr. Wongvibulsin, a fourth-year dermatology resident in the UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program.
Dr. Wongvibulsin’s work in the STAR program is funded in part by a research fellowship from the Dermatology Foundation. She is part of Aydogan Ozcan, PhD’s engineering lab, where she studies artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering applications to address gaps in the care of inflammatory skin diseases. She enjoys having the opportunity to bridge disciplines.
“I am excited to work on solutions that have the potential to expand access, improve diagnosis and make care more personalized,” she said. Already, she has led key studies on skin conditions such as hidradenitis suppurativa and prurigo nodularis, as well as those that arise from immune checkpoint inhibitor toxicity. Her publications have appeared in Nature Medicine, JAMA Dermatology and many others.
One of the biggest challenges Dr. Wongvibulsin faces in her work is the need to ensure that AI tools are developed and validated using representative, high-quality data — a critical point in ensuring that they are safe, equitable and clinically meaningful. Translating models from research to real-world implementation is also another major area of difficulty.
“Addressing this will require stronger evaluation frameworks, transparent reporting standards and close collaboration between clinicians, engineers and patients to ensure these tools truly improve care,” she said. In addition to her research, Dr. Wongvibulsin currently chairs the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Augmented Intelligence Committee Standards Workgroup, where she leads efforts to establish best practices for the responsible development, evaluation and use of AI tools in dermatology.
Dr. Wongvibulsin is appreciative of the highly collaborative, forward-thinking culture of the DoM, and is grateful to those who have seen her potential — particularly STAR program leaders such as Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD, who shared with her the opportunity to apply for an ASCI E-Gen Award, and those who nominated her: Dr. Ozcan and Philip O. Scumpia, MD, PhD.
“There is a strong commitment to innovation alongside clinical excellence, and I have been fortunate to train in an environment that genuinely supports physician-scientists and interdisciplinary work.”
Carlos Irwin A. Oronce, MD, MPH, PhD
ASCI E-Gen Award
Dr. Oronce might not have applied for the ASCI E-Gen Award were it not for the support of his UCLA STAR Program Co-Director Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD and UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research (GIM/HSR) Chief Carol M. Mangione, MD, MSPH. He’s now one of the few health services and population health researchers in the ASCI’s early career programs — a designation that he is deeply honored to hold.
“I hadn’t seriously considered it until Dr. Sallam encouraged me to apply, and I’m so glad he did,” said Dr. Oronce, who in addition to conducting research through the GIM/HSR division also works as a hospitalist in the Veterans Affairs (VA) Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. “I’m looking forward to learning from the other brilliant physician-scientists in the program and benefiting from the longitudinal programming that the E-Gen Award provides.”
Dr. Oronce’s research aims to ameliorate health disparities, especially those among Asian American communities. He has contributed greatly to scholarship in this area; for instance, as I shared in this newsletter last February, Dr. Oronce in 2024 co-led a study published in JAMA Network Open that exposed significant fallacies in the widely held myth that Asians are over-represented among doctors. During his time in the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP), he worked with his mentors Yusuke Tsugawa, MD, MPH, PhD and Catherine A. Sarkisian, MD to illuminate the relationship between race, policy and health outcomes for older adults on Medicare and to measure the rates of low-value health service utilization across the University of California health system.
Dr. Oronce’s next major project builds on these experiences to study how to improve Veteran access to high-quality health care outside of the VA. The MISSION Act was passed by Congress in 2018 to make this easier, but there is evidence that they are receiving worse care. Dr. Oronce plans to apply for a VA career development award to study and solve this problem.
“I think a potential fix is re-designing the way we pay for that care to reward quality, but it can be very tricky, as we've seen in Medicare's payment experiments,” he said. “I plan on focusing my VA career development award application on understanding the problem systematically and proposing solutions based on what the data reveal.”
Dr. Oronce enjoys that his research can make a tangible difference, as much of it is applied work that takes place in real-world settings.
“For example, on both the VA and UCLA sides I need to be mindful of how the research questions I’m pursuing can help operational leaders or policymakers make decisions to improve the care of patients in their systems,” Dr. Oronce said. “For the work that I do in Asian American health disparities, it's incredibly rewarding to receive emails from community leaders who say that the data we've produced confirm what they're seeing on the ground and can help them advocate for more resources to address unmet needs.”
For Dr. Oronce, the best part about working in the DoM is the camaraderie.
“There's a genuine collegiality, both within my division of GIM/HSR and across DoM, especially among the early-career health services researchers,” Dr. Oronce said. “Many of us came through STAR or the NCSP and often lean on each other for feedback on our science or to seek advice on early-career challenges.”
Lloyd Harvey, MD, PhD
ASCI E-Gen Award
Dr. Harvey was surprised and grateful when he learned he had received an ASCI E-Gen Award. He feels it is a testament to the mentorship, collaboration and support that he has had as a fellow in the UCLA STAR Program and through his prior training at the University of Pittsburgh.
“It felt less like an individual achievement and more like a validation of the team science and translational approach we’ve been building.”
Dr. Harvey studies pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a rare condition with a still-mysterious etiology, and enjoys the sense of purpose that comes with finding ways to improve the lives of those with a historically underrecognized disease. He noted that the past two to three decades of research have seen remarkable progress, and that the field is especially unique because so many of the scientists who drove foundational discoveries are still actively engaged in research. This gives the relatively small, deeply collaborative community of PAH researchers “a tangible sense of continuity between the past and present,” he said.
“Interacting with these leaders is both humbling and energizing, and it reinforces that the work we’re doing now is part of a larger, ongoing effort,” Dr. Harvey explained. “It genuinely feels like contributing to something greater than yourself, and very much like standing on the shoulders of giants while helping to push the field forward.”
From Dr. Harvey’s perspective, one of the main challenges in PAH research is that nearly half of patients continue to be classified as having idiopathic disease — a designation that highlights a lack of understanding of its genetic and molecular etiology and the need for more research. At the same time, he added, “the field is at an inflection point,” with new first-in-class therapies such as sotatercept that in clinical trials have had clinical and disease-modifying effects.
“However, as these therapies move into broader use, questions around durability, heterogeneity of response and generalizability across diverse patient populations are becoming increasingly apparent,” Dr. Harvey said. There is a critical need to conduct deep molecular and genetic profiling of patients with PAH in order to understand the true origin of their disease and pairing this with experimental platforms, like patient-derived inducible pluripotent stem cells and organoid models, may offer a path toward linking genes to disease mechanisms and therapeutic response.
“Ultimately, the goal is to move beyond empiric treatment strategies toward a more precise, individualized framework, where therapies are informed by the underlying biology of each patient’s disease,” Dr. Harvey said.
To Dr. Harvey, one of the best aspects of training in the DoM is the strong sense of ownership.
“You’re supported but also trusted to develop your own clinical judgement and scientific direction,” he said. “That balance makes the growth feel more meaningful — you’re not just following a path; you’re actively shaping it.”
At the same time, Dr. Harvey added, thoughtful collaboration and mentorship are always available, creating an environment where one can take on new challenges while continuing to grow with confidence. He is especially grateful to his own mentors and colleagues who make his work possible, from his University of Pittsburgh mentor Stephen Y. Chan, MD, PhD, FAHA to those who surround him now in the DoM, including Priscilla Y. Hsue, MD, Karol E. Watson, MD, PhD, Linda L. Demer, MD, PhD and Tamar Sallam, MD, PhD.
“They have created a culture that genuinely supports and invests in physician-scientists,” Dr. Harvey said.
Matthew S. Durstenfeld, MD
ASCI Young Physician Scientist Award
Dr. Durstenfeld — a physician-scientist investigating the intersection of infections and cardiovascular health — did not expect to be selected for the ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award.
“I was quite surprised — there are so many well-deserving physician-scientists, and I did not expect to receive this recognition,” he recalled. “My next response was gratitude for my mentors.”
Dr. Durstenfeld became interested in the relationship between infections and cardiovascular diseases because of his experiences in global health in Ghana and Kenya.
“There is a growing epidemic of heart disease in places where infectious diseases are still prominent, and so focusing on this topic allows me to pursue interesting scientific questions that I hope will have a great impact,” he said.
Dr. Durstenfeld’s research seeks to find ways to prevent post-infection heart complications, an especially pertinent area of research in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. He completed his cardiology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2021 under the mentorship of UCLA Division of Cardiology Chief Priscilla Y. Hsue, MD, who was then a cardiologist at UCSF. His K12 career development award focused on teasing apart the mechanisms that underlie cardiopulmonary symptoms of Long COVID, leading to several studies that illuminated the condition’s impact on the heart as well as its similarities to the heart issues caused by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).
Dr. Durstenfeld continues to study both Long COVID and HIV here at UCLA, where he is conducting research under his K23 grant with the mentorship of Dr. Hsue. One of his projects focuses on learning whether the best strategy to treat Long COVID is to target the immune system itself; he leads the cardiopulmonary exercise testing core lab for an NIH-funded randomized clinical trial of a JAK inhibitor called baricitinib on people with Long COVID. Baricitinib targets pro-inflammatory mechanisms that are thought to drive the disease.
“Our trial is rigorously testing this hypothesis, and the insights from this study into the mechanisms of Long COVID will be important even if the trial is negative,” Dr. Durstenfeld said.
Dr. Durstenfeld loves the team science that his work requires. He is proud to be part of the growing team within the DoM.
“The UCLA DoM is building an all-star team of researchers across a number of disciplines,” he said. “As a new member of the team, I have felt welcomed and valued by the other players and the leadership of the team, to use a sports analogy.”
Gloria Yiu, MD, PhD
ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award
For Dr. Yiu, the ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award is meaningful not only because of the recognition, but because of those to whom she is now connected.
“ASCI represents a community I deeply admire — people who are curious, mission-driven and genuinely passionate about discovery,” said Dr. Yiu, who is a rheumatologist. “This award affirms that this work matters and motivates me to keep pursuing it alongside people who share that same drive.”
Dr. Yiu is a graduate of the UCLA STAR program and a 2024 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists awardee. She is an assistant professor of medicine who sees patients in Westwood and leads a research program investigating T cell development to target autoimmunity, autoinflammation and immunodeficiency. She completed her postdoctoral training in the lab of Gay M. Crooks, MD.
Dr. Yiu loves that her lab’s research sits at the intersection of fundamental biology and real human disease.
“I am a cellular immunologist at heart — I want to understand how the immune system is built, how it goes wrong and how we might rebuild it. Those questions are mechanistically rich and clinically urgent at the same time,” Dr. Yiu said. “My patients make that urgency real. They motivate our work to close the distance between a mechanistic insight and a meaningful therapy.”
Dr. Yiu noted that autoimmune diseases are difficult to treat because they are hard to understand.
“The immune system is deeply interconnected, and when it breaks, it often breaks in multiple places at once. That complexity makes it difficult to identify a single therapeutic target,” Dr. Yiu said. “My hope is that by understanding the upstream signals that govern immune development, we can identify more precise points of intervention and develop therapies that are not just effective, but durable.”
In a challenging landscape for research funding and physician-scientist training, it can be easy to deprioritize science. Dr. Yiu is proud to work in a department with a commitment to research that remains real and visible.
“The result is a community of investigators who are generous and excited about each other’s work,” Dr. Yiu said. “Some of the most significant moments in science start with an unexpected conversation down the hall.”
Dr. Yiu added that she knows how many people it takes to nurture the career of a single independent investigator, from mentors and collaborators to trainees and colleagues.
“I have benefited from that generosity many times over, and one of my deepest commitments is to carry that tradition forward: to invest in the next generation the way so many have invested in me,” Dr. Yiu said.
Back row, left to right: Chris Turner, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar; Dr. Yiu
Back row, left to right: Chris Turner, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar; Dr. Yiu
DGSOM Students Awarded Prestigious Sarnoff Fellowship for Cardiovascular Research
As some of you may know, I chair the scientific committee of the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation, which seeks to provide formative research experience on a competitive basis to medical students across the country. Exceptional education of the next generation of physicians is a key pillar of our department’s strategic plan, and what better testament to our success than for our medical students be selected for world-class fellowships? I am delighted to share that two UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine medical students, Juan Melesio and Samuel Margolis, have been named fellows within the Sarnoff Fellowship Program, a highly competitive cardiovascular research program sponsored by the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
Becoming a Sarnoff fellow is a fantastic achievement that opens many doors. Fellows spend one year conducting intense basic, clinical, translational or outcomes research projects at any laboratory in the country under the guidance of an advisor, culminating in a manuscript for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Afterward they enjoy a lifelong community of mentors and peer alumni who actively advance their careers.
Sam, after he learned that he had been selected for the fellowship, talked to someone very special.
“The first thing I did was call my mom,” he said. “After that came this wave of genuine gratitude. I cannot tell you what it meant to me about being believed in by people you look up to. It feels like a signal that the questions I care about are worth chasing, and that kind of vote of confidence changes things. I’m so thankful to the Sarnoff Foundation for making that possible."
Juan, meanwhile, needed to step outside.
“After I received the news, I took a long walk around the UCLA just to let it all sink in. My mind kept flashing back to before I even started medical school. I remember meeting a Sarnoff fellow at Stanford but I never believed I’d be in that same position,” he said. “My belief changed because my mentors believed in me long before I believed in myself. Their confidence in me is what really gave me the push to go for this. I’m just incredibly excited to make the most of this next chapter.”
Sam will leverage this opportunity to create technology that can tease apart disease subtypes to develop more effective treatments for heart conditions.
I want to play matchmaker between clinical medicine and machine learning, using large-scale patient data and AI models to find disease subtypes and phenotypes we've been lumping together for too long, then tracing those patterns back to their genomic basis and potential treatments,” he explained. He is most looking forward to having open time to create something new with the help of an equally exceptional team.
“Uninterrupted funded time to think and build is rare in medicine,” Sam said. “I’m also excited to get to work alongside some of the smartest people at the edge of their fields in cardiology, engineering and biology.”
Juan will spend his research year focusing on unlocking the potential cardiac applications of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), with a particular emphasis on using them to better understand cardiac fibrosis.
“The goal is to use these cells to model how scarring occurs and then identify drug targets capable of inhibiting those pathways,” he explained. “What excites me most about this research is its scalability, while my primary focus is the heart, the mechanisms of fibrosis are nearly universal. If we can find a way to stop this process, the impact could reach beyond cardiovascular health and into scarring that affects almost every organ system in the body.”
Juan knows he has a daunting task ahead in selecting a laboratory for his research, but he is enthralled at the chance to learn from the top physician-scientists in the world.
“I’m also deeply inspired by the Sarnoff community itself,” he said. “Seeing world-class leaders return to the annual meetings year after year to mentor the next generation of scholars shows a level of commitment to the field that I can’t wait to be a part of.”
Juan added that a career in academic medicine was not part of daily life in his hometown, the rural, agricultural community of Williams in Northern California. He is charting a new, unfamiliar course that makes the Sarnoff Fellowship especially meaningful to him.
“Over the next year, I hope to play my part in pushing the field of medicine forward so that these advancements can one day reach communities like the one that shaped me,” he said.
Juan is grateful to his UCLA mentors Jeffrey J. Hsu, MD, PhD and Jesus G. Ulloa, MD, as well as to Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD (who happens to be a UCLA STAR program alumni!). Sam thanks his mentors Tzung Hsiai, MD, PhD, Mina Sedrak, MD, MS, Joann Elmore, MD, MPH and Karol E. Watson, MD, PhD.
Sam and Juan also mentioned thanking me, as I have had the very good fortune to provide mentorship to both of them. I would like to thank them both for being such fantastic mentees, and I cannot wait to see all that they achieve!
Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD Elected to Association of American Physicians
I am pleased to share that Dennis J. Slamon, MD, PhD was recently elected to join the Association of American Physicians (AAP), an honor reserved for physicians with significant achievements in basic or translational biomedical research. Only 70 people are elected to the AAP per year, and it is considered to be one of the highest distinctions in academic medicine.
“I am deeply honored to have been elected to the Association of American Physicians and extremely grateful to my colleagues here at UCLA who have been instrumental in the research efforts that resulted in this honor,” Dr. Slamon said. “The amazing collaborative scientific environment within the UCLA Department of Medicine, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UCLA Health System have all made the translational cancer work I am being acknowledged for, a palpable reality and a gratifying career.”
Dr. Slamon's election to the AAP reflects a career of extraordinary research achievements and lasting impact. In the early 1980s, he and his lab here at UCLA identified the association between amplification and overexpression of the HER2 gene and aggressive clinical behavior and poor clinical outcomes for women whose breast cancers contain this genetic defect. This work defined an entirely new subgroup of breast cancer. He went on to conduct the clinical translational research that led to development of the breast cancer drug Hercepin, which has saved millions of lives. He and his group also developed and led clinical trials of drugs known as CDK4/6 inhibitors, which treat the most common subtype of breast cancer.
In the course of these discoveries, Dr. Slamon and his colleagues changed the way oncologists study and treat cancer, turning it from a disease characterized by its morphology and tissue origin to one defined and treated based on its underlying molecular mechanisms. This paradigm shift is the basis for the precision medicine approaches that are redefining cancer treatment today.
Dr. Slamon continues to lead groundbreaking clinical and translational cancer research and is a highly regarded leader, both within the DoM and the field of oncology. He serves as the chief of the UCLA Division of Hematology/Oncology, and he is also director of clinical/translational research and director of the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Slamon joined the DoM as a hematology/oncology fellow in 1979 after completing his residency and graduating with honors from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine where he also earned a PhD in cell biology. He has received countless awards for his research, including being recently named the Precision Medicine World Conference 2026 Pioneer Award Honoree and the recipient of the 2024 Szent-Györgyi Prize. Late last year he was named to the National Academy of Inventors. In February he was named No. 52 on Forbes 250 Greatest American Inventors.
Dr. Slamon is the son of a coal miner and the subject of a Lifetime movie about the discovery of Herceptin. Congratulations Dennis! We are more than proud of your many accomplishments and honored to have you as a colleague in the DOM.
Dale
P.S.
Thanks to the hundreds of you who turned out last Wednesday to watch me throw out the first pitch at the LA Dodgers game! For those who missed it, you will have to wait another week to see the official video!
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