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The Paul Marks Prize medal
Image of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

, founding director of the Cancer Program at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard, has been awarded a 2007 Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Named for the center’s President Emeritus Paul A. Marks, the prize recognizes a new generation of leaders in cancer research, who are making significant contributions to the understanding of cancer or are improving cancer treatment through basic or clinical research.

A pioneer in genomic approaches to studying cancer biology, Golub has made major discoveries on the molecular basis of childhood leukemia. His research team has also developed methods to use microarrays, also known as DNA chips, to classify cancer subtypes, which may lead to new targeted drugs and improved clinical trials. One technique, called gene expression-based high-throughput screening, has helped identify potential new cancer drugs for treating acute myeloid leukemia and Ewing sarcoma that are now in clinical trials. Golub and fellow researchers also created a new genomic tool called the Connectivity Map. Using the map, researchers can search for disease treatments by comparing the conditions’ gene expression profiles with the mechanisms of action of both existing and new drugs.

In addition to his work in the Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Cancer Program, Golub is also the Charles A. Dana Investigator in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Golub is one of three Paul Marks Prize recipients this year, in addition to Angelika Amon from MIT and Gregory Hannon from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The prize is awarded every other year and recipients each receive a medal and share a cash award of $150,000.

A previous recipient of the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research is 2005 winner Tyler Jacks, who is the David H. Koch professor of biology at MIT, the director of the MIT Center for Cancer Research, an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and an associate member at the Ó³»­´«Ã½.