Charles L. Sawyers

Charles Sawyers

Charles L. Sawyers is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2006 where he serves as the Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program. Sawyers studies mechanisms of cancer drug resistance with an eye toward developing novel therapies. He co-discovered the antiandrogen drug enzalutamide that was approved by the FDA in 2012 for treatment of advanced prostate cancer. He shared the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for the development of the ABL kinase inhibitor imatinib for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia and the second generation ABL inhibitor dasatinib to overcome imatinib resistance. Other honors include the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Science, BBVA Knowledge Award in Biomedicine, STAT Biomedical Innovation Award, and AACR Distinguished Public Service Award for his role in AACR Project GENIE, an international consortium of cancer centers who share genomic and clinical data from patients treated at their respective clinical sites. Sawyers is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Board by President Obama and has served on the Board of Directors of Novartis since 2013.