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Fox Chase's V. Craig Jordan to Receive ASCO's Karnofsky Memorial Award for Advances in Breast Cancer Treatment and Prevention
 | Listen to Craig Jordan recount his award lecture |
PHILADELPHIA (April 14, 2008) - The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has announced that Fox Chase Cancer Center's V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, will receive the 2008 David A. Karnofsky Memorial Award for advances that have changed the way doctors treat breast cancer patients.
Dr. Jordan will be honored on Saturday, May 31 in Chicago at the ASCO Annual Meeting where he will also present a lecture titled: The Paradoxical Actions of Estrogen in Breast Cancer: Survival or Death? Dr. Jordan is currently Vice President for Medical Science at Fox Chase, where he also holds the Alfred G. Knudson, Jr., MD, PhD, Chair in Cancer Research.
"Over the years, Craig Jordan has conducted vital research with lasting implications for cancer medicine, and we would like to join with ASCO in honoring his achievements," says Michael V. Seiden, MD, PhD, president and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center. "His work, particularly in paving the way for tamoxifen, continues to pay dividends in the form of countless lives saved."
Beginning in the 1970s, Dr. Jordan's laboratory pioneered the work that turned tamoxifen into a targeted cancer therapy, which then jump-started a field of study into so-called designer estrogens. These drugs, called selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMS), can have different effects on their targets, estrogen receptors, depending on where the receptor is located within a woman's body. Dr. Jordan completed the first laboratory studies that were the basis for the subsequent successful clinical testing of tamoxifen, which went on to become the first approved agent to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
The SERM raloxifene, for example, exhibits an anti-estrogen activity that can prevent cancer in breast tissue, but in other tissue the same drug has an estrogen-like effect that increases bone density. The clinical use of raloxifene was also developed in Dr. Jordan's laboratory, and the drug is currently approved in post-menopausal women to prevent osteoporosis and reduce breast cancer risk.
Dr. Jordan is the second Fox Chase research to receive the award in recent years, following Alfred G. Knudson Jr., MD, PhD, who received the award in 1997.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of Temple University Health System, is one of the leading cancer research and treatment centers in the United States. Founded in 1904 in Philadelphia as one of the nation’s first cancer hospitals, Fox Chase also was among the first institutions to receive the National Cancer Institute’s prestigious comprehensive cancer center designation in 1974. Fox Chase researchers have won the highest awards in their fields, including two Nobel Prizes. Fox Chase physicians are routinely recognized in national rankings, and the Center’s nursing program has achieved Magnet status for excellence three consecutive times. Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research and oversees programs in cancer prevention, detection, survivorship, and community outreach. For more information, call 1-888-FOX-CHASE (1-888-369-2427).
