"It is a great honor for me to receive the prestigious Hamilton Fairley Award. ESMO is an important and very active organization that facilitates the distribution of evidence-based knowledge and the exchange of ideas between basic and clinical scientists and clinicians", concludes Prof Glimelius.

The 2010 ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Professor Hilary Calvert who has long been involved in anticancer drug development. Prof Calvert is the Director of Anticancer Drug Discovery and Development at University College London Partners.

The 2010 award to Prof Calvert was given in recognition for his seminal work on the introduction of carboplatin as a major anti-cancer agent and the development of a dosing formula based on its pharmacokinetics and its subsequent clinical use in ovarian cancer. "Prof Calvert is undoubtedly an international leader in his field", highlighted Prof Ian Smith, Chair of the ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award, "and his work has benefited countless patients around the world." The ESMO Lifetime Achievement Award is attributed to either an international research team or individual who have demonstrated commitment to cancer research treatment. It is supported by an unrestricted educational grant from GlaxoSmithKline.

In recent years Prof Calvert has worked on a program of drug development aimed at the use of molecular pathology of human cancer to define targets and develop drugs aimed at these targets. His research into the role of PARP inhibitors is leading to many developments in oncology as well as a variety of other diseases.

"We are in what is often called the 'post???genomic era'. This really means that we have amazing technologies that allow us to characterize gene expressions, mutations, translocations, etc., at an unprecedented rate. The excitement is that sometimes these are truly cancer specific changes and we can find or make drugs that exploit them. The challenge is that many of the most promising potential targets for drug design are regarded as intractable (or 'undruggable'). We need to develop techniques to approach these targets."

When asked which of his achievements has given him the most satisfaction, Prof Calvert replies: "This is hard to answer because there are so many more things to do. I think we achieved a good multidisciplinary team in Newcastle and established PARP inhibitors as a therapeutic class. However, I hope that the achievement that will give me the most satisfaction is yet to come!"

Source: European Society for Medical Oncology