New award in hematology research presented to Dr. Mark J. Levis
At the 2008 Annual Meeting, The ASCO Cancer Foundation is please to present an Advanced Clinical Research Award (ACRA) to Mark J. Levis, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in recognition of his contributions to research advancements in the field of hematologic malignancies and his commitment to improving treatment approaches to the disease.
The ACRA in Hematologic Malignancies will provide $450,000 over 3 years to Dr. Levis’ institution and is supported through a generous grant from Genentech BioOncologyTM. ACRAs are presented to physicians who have 5 to 10 years experience and who are full-time faculty members in a clinical setting at an academic medical center. Dr. Levis was selected for the unique, patient-oriented focus of his research proposal. Additional selection criteria included the significance and originality of the project, appropriateness and feasibility of the proposed research methods, potential effect of the research, and a record of prior research experience and accomplishment. According to the award terms, he will spend 75% of his time dedicated to research during the award period.
“I obviously feel extraordinarily fortunate [to be the recipient of the 2008 ACRA in Hematologic Malignancies],” Dr. Levis told ASCO Daily News. “ In particular, as the inaugural recipient, I feel a responsibility to ensure that the funding will lead to meaningful advances in the treatment of leukemia, so as to set the bar high for future recipients.”
Dr. Levis believes that his award-winning research proposal, “Incorporating a FLT3 inhibitor into AML therapy,” has the potential to represent a change in the way we start off the development of a new oncology drug.
“What we are trying to do with this project,” he explained, “is completely change the way early-phase oncology trials are done. In developing a targeted therapy for leukemia, we are trying to implement a method of identifying not just the safe and tolerable dose of a targeted drug, but the dose that will inhibit the target in a manner that best recapitulates how the drug was used in the laboratory.”
Dr. Levis’ “keen interest” in cell signaling was born from his background in laboratory research — he began his career as a research assistant in the Department of Genetics at the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to obtain his medical degree and a doctorate degree in biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco. “Oncology,” he noted, “is a field treating diseases in which this signaling has usually gone awry, so the problems confronting us in treating cancer can at least be approached by manipulating cell signaling.”
ASCO has been an importance presence in Dr. Levis’ career from the beginning and a source of support for his early-career research. The Society “has supported me from very early on,” he said. “I was the recipient of an ASCO Cancer Foundation Career Development Award in 2003 for research titled ‘Targeting FLT3 as a novel, specific therapy for leukemia,’ and I used that funding to help develop the methods that I am now implementing in my current project.”
Aside from his clinical research, Dr. Levis serves as a member of the PDQ Adult Treatment Editorial Board. In 2002, he received the Daniel Nathans Research Award (Young Investigator Award, Johns Hopkins University) for his work “A FLT3 tyrosine kinase inhibitor is cytotoxic to leukemia cells in vitro and in vivo.”
Dr. Levis emphasized the importance of translation research to future advances in cancer care. “I think one of the biggest reasons we have had such a low success rate getting oncology drugs beyond early-phase trials all the way to approval has been the lack of collaboration between scientists and clinicians,” he said. “Scientists do not always understand that a human being is not just a large tissue culture dish with arms and legs. Clinicians, on the other hand, often lose sight of the intended biologic consequence of the drug they are studying in their zeal to conform to rigid trial designs.”
The ACRA is The ASCO Cancer Foundation’s newest grant, and it is designed to support the research of more experienced clinical investigators. The first ACRA was presented in 2004 to Vered Stearns, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, through the generous support of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
More information about application requirements for future ACRAs, as well as information about the entire ASCO Cancer Foundation Grants program, is available at www.ascocancerfoundation.org. Questions can be submitted by e-mail to grants@asco.org.
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